"View of Constantinople and the Bosporus" --- --- Ivan Aivazovsky

Introduction:

In the past week, the price of BTC broke through the $70,000 mark, reaching a historic high; the price of ETH also surpassed $3,900, hitting its highest point since January 4, 2022; with CEX daily trading volume nearing $100 billion and the daily trading volume of the US BTC spot ETF reaching a historical $10 billion, the overall activity in the cryptocurrency market has shown significant growth.

1. Investment and Financing Observation

Last week, there were a total of 26 investment and financing events in the cryptocurrency market, an increase of 13% year-on-year, with a total funding scale exceeding $192 million:

The DeFi sector announced 4 investment and financing events, among which the institutional crypto platform Utila completed a $11.5 million seed round financing, co-led by NFX and Wing VC;

The infrastructure and tools sector announced 10 financing events, including the open-source cryptography company Zama, which completed a $73 million Series A financing co-led by Multicoin Capital and Protocol Labs;

Other Web3/crypto-related sectors announced 9 financing events, including the decentralized AI network Sahara, which completed a $6 million seed round financing led by Polychain Capital;

The centralized finance sector announced 3 investment and financing events, including the crypto payment company Baanx, which completed a $20 million Series A financing, with investors including Ledger, Tezos, Chiron, and the British Business Bank.

From a data perspective, the number of investment and financing events in the cryptocurrency market last week changed little, mainly concentrated in the infrastructure direction; additionally, UTXO and KuCoin Labs were notably active, primarily focusing on infrastructure and DeFi sectors.

About Zama

Zama is a cryptography company building open-source homomorphic encryption tools for developers. Its homomorphic encryption (FHE) is a technology that allows data to be processed without decryption. This can be used to create privacy-preserving smart contracts on public, permissionless blockchains, where only specific users can see transaction data and contract states.

About Baanx

Baanx is a 100% service provider of API-driven digital/crypto-friendly financial services, offering products such as debit cards (physical + virtual), digital wallets, IBAN, CrypDrafts, remittances/foreign exchange, payment gateways, etc. The CL Technology brand also launched a white-label, fully managed application for user communities --- --- helping the global public adopt blockchain technology, digital assets, and cryptocurrencies.

About Utila

Utila is building a self-custody wallet platform and API that enables organizations of all sizes to securely manage digital assets and build custom products. With its institutional MPC wallet, institutional investors, trading firms, and Web3 builders can efficiently manage crypto assets across multiple blockchains, wallets, and users on a single platform without any complexity. Additionally, developers can leverage its API to build custom products on top of multi-chain wallet infrastructure.

2. Industry Data

CEX Trading Volume Hits New High, Traders Suspected to Take Profits

Kaiko data: On March 5, the global centralized exchange (CEX) Bitcoin trading volume reached $46.25 billion, setting a record high since 2021. Among them, Binance accounted for $23.84 billion, Coinbase $4.83 billion, and Bybit, OKX, and KuCoin reached $4.29 billion, $3.53 billion, and $1.49 billion, respectively.

On March 6, the 7-day moving average of major exchanges reached $97.4 billion, far exceeding about $24 billion in early February. Similar historical situations mainly occurred during the bull market in 2021 when Bitcoin first reached a peak of $69,000.

Market data from 33 global CEXs shows: the total value gap between BTC sell orders (the so-called ask side) and buy orders (the bid side) within a 2% range of the current market price has expanded to nearly $100 million, about five times the usual amount.

From late January to now, there has been relatively more liquidity on the ask side, indicating that investors have been seeking to sell, and the current BTC inquiry depth is very unbalanced, which may suggest that traders are taking profits near historical highs.

MAYC Plummets Raises Concerns Over PFP NFTs

The floor price of MAYC has fallen below the mint price, with a 7-day decline of 28.56%, currently reported at 2.6566 ETH. Its decline is mainly influenced by the price status of BAYC (which dropped 17% this week).

The scarcity of NFTs is more driven by speculation, with many institutions predicting that as NFTs evolve towards practicality in the future, many PFPs will become worthless; however, in reality, scarcity and social attributes still hold some significance, but this binding effect has yet to be fully realized by Yuga Labs. If it aims to become a luxury brand IP, it needs more collaborations with luxury brands and larger-scale binding and marketing, as its essence is brand building.

AI Sector Rises Generally, Project Tokens Mixed

The NVIDIA GTC conference will be held from March 18 to 21 in California. Influenced by the conference, several crypto AI projects and AI concept coins that announced participation in GTC24 have surged significantly, with projects like NEAR, FET, RNDR, GPT, and NMT seeing increases of over 20%. Among them, WLD, ARKM, RNDR, and FET tokens reached all-time highs.

On March 9, the news that Sam Altman would rejoin the OpenAI board as CEO further boosted the rise of AI concept coins, with WLD rising over 50% in 24 hours, briefly surpassing $11.

The bullish sentiment for AI tokens is mainly due to the deep-rooted understanding of the AI concept, making it easier for new retail investors to comprehend and accept. The fundamentals of AI + Crypto are easily perceived. During this period, numerous crypto projects have emerged, linking themselves to AI to leverage the hype and trends to boost their token prices.

AIOZ Gains Attention with 175% Surge

Last week, the price of AIOZ surged approximately 175%, standing out even amidst the general rise in the AI sector, attracting significant attention from investors.

AIOZ tokens are fully circulated and have been listed on exchanges such as Coinbase, Bybit, and Gate.io, but have yet to be listed on OKX and Binance. Currently, its market cap is $830 million, with three previous ICO experiences, achieving an ROI of up to 50 times to date.

About AIOZ

AIOZ Network is a comprehensive infrastructure solution for web3 storage, decentralized AI computing, live streaming, and video on demand (VOD), combining the robustness of Cosmos with the compatibility of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). Its dCDN platform revolutionizes file storage and distribution in Web 3.0 dApps, providing cost-effective solutions for file storage and media streaming.

Financing disclosure information is only available from MV Global, with the amount unknown.

On-chain MeMe Coin Trading Popularity, Solana's Share Grows 5 Times

Currently, as the MeMe coin sector continues to be strong, its on-chain trading volume has significantly increased, especially from March 2 to March 5, where trading volume surged from $4.8 billion to $11.5 billion, with over one-third of the trades concentrated in the Solana ecosystem.

Data shows: Since November 2023, the market share of Solana's DEX has grown fivefold, from 6% to about 30%. This growth is mainly driven by two factors: the decrease in trading costs on the Solana platform, lowering the participation threshold for users; and the potential airdrop from the DEX aggregator Jupiter, attracting users to trade more frequently in hopes of receiving more airdrop rewards. The popularity of meme coins often serves as a key factor driving increased DEX usage, especially for tokens that have yet to be listed. New airdrops, inflows of funds, and previously underutilized assets from earlier cycles may promote the rise of meme culture in Solana and other new ecosystems.

MeMe Coin Data

As of March 11, 14:00, the total market cap of MeMe coins exceeded $63 billion. DOGE, with a market cap of over $25 billion, remains in the top position, followed by PEPE, FLOKI, and WIF, with WIF, as a newly issued meme coin in 2023, having a unit price exceeding $2 and a market cap of $2.1 billion, ranking fifth among meme coins.

3. VC Holdings

Note: The above data is sourced from https://platform.arkhamintelligence.com/, statistical time: March 11, 2024, 12:00 (UTC+8)

4. This Week's Focus

March 11

• Moonbeam (GLMR) will unlock approximately 3.04 million tokens at 8:00 AM;
• Maker has voted to approve several proposals, including raising the DAI savings rate to 15%, with changes taking place at 3:55 AM on the 11th;
• The Cancun upgrade on Gnosis Chain will take place on March 11;
• Injective integrates with Ethena, and USDe holders on Injective will be eligible to participate in the Ethena Shards event;
• Arbitrum Arcade will start on March 11, lasting 8 weeks, featuring over 24 Arbitrum ecosystem native games;

March 12

• US February CPI;
• Starknet v0.13.1 upgrade plan will be launched, activating on the mainnet today;
• QnA3.AI airdrop claim will be open until March 12, with a total of 5 million tokens airdropped to the 100,000 most active users;

March 13

• US weekly EIA crude oil inventory;
• Ethereum mainnet will undergo the Dencun upgrade at block height 8626176 (March 13, 21:55);
• APT will unlock 24.84 million tokens at 6:00 AM on March 13, worth approximately $329 million, accounting for 6.73% of the circulating supply;

March 14

• US February retail data;
• US weekly initial jobless claims;
• Euler (EUL) will unlock approximately 87,000 tokens at 7:34 PM;
• OP Labs plans to launch 4844 at 8:00 AM today;
• Pragma London will be held in London, UK;
• The DeFi incentive protocol Fluidity will conduct an ICO and has opened the query page for the second season FLY airdrop activity;

March 15

• ETHGlobal London will be held from March 15 to 17, 2024, in London, UK;
• QnA3.AI's second round of airdrop will take a snapshot on March 15, distributing 5 million GPT;
• CYBER will unlock 886,000 tokens at 6:00 PM, worth approximately $10.51 million, accounting for 5.98% of the circulating supply;
• Rich Rabbit will launch an airdrop plan, with the first round airdropping 20 million MOBILE (approximately $760,000);
• Bitcoin ZK Rollup Layer2 solution SatoshiVM Alpha mainnet will launch;
• FTX Digital will hold a creditors' meeting in the Bahamas at 10:30 PM and will establish a liquidation committee;

March 16

• The Cosmos Hub community "Gaia v15" upgrade proposal voting will end on March 16;
• Arbitrum token ARB will unlock 1.11 billion tokens at 9:00 PM, worth approximately $2.32 billion, accounting for 76.62% of the circulating supply;

March 17

• APE will unlock 15.6 million tokens at 8:00 AM, worth approximately $35.57 million, accounting for 2.55% of the circulating supply;
• QnA3.AI will participate in the NVIDIA GTC24 conference, where users can experience its AI + Web3 Agent services at the booth;

5. Conclusion

Last week, the total scale of investment and financing in the cryptocurrency industry exceeded $192 million. Although there was no significant growth, it highlighted market vitality at a time when market attention is focused on the rising trend. With the NVIDIA GTC conference approaching, the general rise of AI tokens has led the sector trend last week, with AIOZ Network's notable 175% increase reflecting the value growth of decentralized storage and video streaming services in the Web3 space.

This week, several noteworthy events include the unlocking plans for various project tokens, multiple important meetings, and upgrade plans. Among them, the most significant is the ETH Dencun upgrade, which may shift market attention towards ETH, triggering a new round of trend movements. We see that the cryptocurrency market is driving financial and technological innovation at an unprecedented speed. While market conditions may experience periodic corrections, the long-term bullish trend is expected to continue and reach new highs. Investors and project parties should closely monitor industry dynamics, seize investment opportunities, and prepare for the upcoming changes.

Note: All opinions above are for reference only and do not constitute investment advice. If there are any objections, please feel free to contact us for correction.