《The Harvest》 --- --- Camille Pissarro

Introduction:

Federal Reserve Chairman Powell hinted that interest rate hikes are unlikely in the short term, leading to a broad rally in global risk asset markets. Additionally, as U.S. non-farm data fell short of expectations, it may shift the Fed's path towards rate cuts from a stroll to a sprint, prompting significant gains in stocks, cryptocurrencies, and bonds, while the dollar, gold, and oil weaken.

1. Investment and Financing Observation

Last week, there were 32 investment and financing events in the crypto market, an increase of 10.34% month-on-month, with a total funding scale of $150 million, a decrease of 27.18% month-on-month:

In the DeFi sector, 9 investment and financing events were announced, including RWA company Securitize, which announced the successful completion of a $47 million strategic financing led by BlackRock; Ironlight completed a $12 million financing, mostly from individual investors with Wall Street backgrounds;

In the CeFi sector, 1 financing event was announced, with retail contract trading platform LazyBear announcing the completion of a strategic financing of 4 million USDT, with participating investors and strategic partners including Gogeko Labs, DWF Labs, etc.;

In the GameFi sector, 6 investment and financing events were announced, including Swedish game studio Patriots Division raising $5 million for the Web3 game Shadow War;

In the infrastructure and tools sector, 5 investment and financing events were announced, with modular liquidity protocol Mitosis announcing the completion of $7 million in financing, led by Amber Group and Foresight Ventures;

In the AI-related field, 1 investment and financing event was announced, with Web3 developer platform Airstack completing $4 million in seed round financing, led by Red Beard Ventures;

Other Web3/crypto applications announced 7 financing events, including Web3 content publishing platform Paragraph completing $5 million in financing, with participation from USV and Coinbase Ventures;

From the month-on-month data, the number of investment and financing events in the cryptocurrency market increased last week, but the total funding scale significantly declined, with market enthusiasm focusing on RWA, GameFi, and Web3 sectors; among VCs, the notably active institutions this week were BlackRock and Electric Capital, primarily focusing on asset management and SocialFi sectors.

According to Rootdata, the total financing amount in the crypto market in April was $1.025 billion, down 6.3% from March's $1.094 billion, with the number of financing events down 10.5% month-on-month. In terms of total financing amount by sector, the top three sectors are CeFi, DeFi, and tools & information services.

About Securitize

Securitize is a digital asset securities company whose mission is to provide shareholders with opportunities to invest in and trade alternative investments, raise funds for companies, manage shareholders, and provide potential liquidity for shareholders. Securitize has pioneered a fully digital integrated RWA platform for issuing, managing, and trading digital asset securities, compliant with existing U.S. regulatory frameworks, with a community of over 1.2 million investors and 3,000 companies.

About Ironlight

Ironlight was founded by Rob McGrath and Matt Celebuski, aiming to tokenize private securities that typically lack liquidity, such as real estate, natural resources, fine arts, public infrastructure, and private equity, with the goal of becoming a tokenized RWA market regulated by the SEC.

About Kiosk

The SocialFi project Kiosk is a Farcaster client that helps creators build a community from 0 to 1 within the app. Creators can share media-rich ideas with their social graph, which can be minted as NFTs, gathering like-minded collectors and collaborators in the channel, establishing custom channel economies such as tips and distributions, and chatting with their community—all done within the Kiosk app.

2. Industry Data

After 7 consecutive days of net outflow, the U.S. BTC spot ETF sees its first net inflow

SoSoValue data: As of May 3, Eastern Time, the total net inflow of BTC spot ETFs was $378 million, marking the first net inflow after 7 days of net outflow, with Fidelity's FBTC seeing the highest single-day net inflow of $103 million, bringing FBTC's historical total net inflow to $8.03 billion.

Since the listing of the U.S. BTC spot ETF, its trend has been positively correlated with market dynamics, and as the ETF sees positive net inflows, the market trend has also begun to show slight rebounds in recent days. Additionally, the trend of ETF net inflows is likely to strengthen in the coming week, but the net inflow value of GBTC remains low, and continued inflow may not be significant.

Currently, the total net asset value of BTC spot ETFs is $51.021 billion, with an ETF net asset ratio (market cap compared to total Bitcoin market cap) of 4.12%, and the historical cumulative net inflow has reached $11.561 billion.

Hong Kong ETF asset management scale exceeds HKD 2 billion, but falls short of expectations

Official data from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange: As of the close on May 3, the asset management scale of the first week of listing for three Hong Kong spot virtual asset ETFs—Huaxia, Jiasheng, and Bosera HashKey—reached HKD 2.13069 billion (approximately USD 255 million), nearly double the asset management scale of virtual asset futures ETFs at approximately HKD 1.192 billion, including:

• Total trading volume of BTC spot ETFs was $27.51 million, with a total holding of 4,220 BTC and total net assets of $250 million;
• Total trading volume of ETH spot ETFs was $4.92 million, with a total holding of 16,280 ETH and total net assets of $48.52 million;

This data shows a significant deviation from market expectations following the approval of Hong Kong ETFs, but when compared to data from Canadian ETFs and UK ETNs, it appears relatively reasonable. We need to view and assess Hong Kong's market scale and influence more rationally and continue to monitor its policy dynamics.

Hong Kong Spot ETF Data:

Bosera HashKey Bitcoin ETF has an asset management scale of HKD 447.22 million, and the Ethereum ETF has an asset management scale of HKD 90.82 million;

Jiasheng Bitcoin ETF has an asset management scale of HKD 449.39 million, and the Ethereum ETF has an asset management scale of HKD 89.87 million;

Huaxia Bitcoin ETF has an asset management scale of HKD 904.49 million, and the Ethereum ETF has an asset management scale of HKD 148.9 million, with a total exceeding HKD 1 billion;

Hong Kong Futures ETF Data:

Samsung BTC Futures ETF has an asset management scale of approximately HKD 135.12 million;

Southern Eastern Bitcoin ETF is approximately HKD 848.9 million;

Southern Eastern Ethereum ETF is approximately HKD 208.06 million;

ETH Stablecoin Trading Volume Breaks Monthly Record

According to The Block: Over the past three months, the monthly trading volume of stablecoins on ETH has continued to grow, reaching a new monthly trading volume high in April. Among them, FDUSD set a record for the best monthly performance.

In fact, much of this data's contribution comes from the use of DAI in MEV trading, where a large amount of DAI is minted and returned in a single transaction, significantly boosting DAI's trading volume data. However, even excluding flash loans, stablecoin trading volume remains impressive, indicating that the activity of ETH ecosystem applications is steadily rising.

About DAI's Trading Data:

According to The Block, DAI's trading volume in April reached $636 billion, accounting for a major portion of the total on-chain trading volume of Ethereum stablecoins, with the total trading volume for the month approaching $1.2 trillion. Compared to March, DAI's trading volume in April increased more than threefold.

At the same time, DAI's supply has also increased by about $1 billion since March 7, bringing the current total supply to $5.44 billion. Although the trading volume of other stablecoins has also increased, DAI's share in the total stablecoin supply has slightly risen during this period.

Tesla Adds DOGE Payment, DOGE Surges Over 20%

Tesla's website information: Some of its products support payment in Dogecoin, with such products displaying the Dogecoin symbol next to the order button, allowing buyers to transfer Dogecoin to Tesla's Dogecoin wallet for payment. Following this news, DOGE surged over 20%, breaking the $0.168 level, currently quoted at $0.162.

Although Tesla has been preparing to accept Dogecoin payments for a long time, this implementation still represents a further integration of the crypto industry with traditional markets, allowing more people to begin to perceive and engage with crypto assets through Tesla's global influence.

According to the Wayback Machine, the last snapshot of Tesla's official website's "Payment, Checkout, and Pricing" page occurred on February 28 of this year, while the Dogecoin FAQ page has existed since January 2022.

Additionally, the products currently supported for purchase with Dogecoin on Tesla's official website do not include Tesla cars, but mainly small peripheral products such as clothing, toys, and children's electric four-wheelers, hats, stainless steel whistles, and commemorative belt buckles, none of which are sold through official channels in China.

3. VC Holdings

Note: The above data is sourced from https://platform.arkhamintelligence.com/, with the statistical time: May 6, 2024, 18:00 (UTC+8).

4. This Week's Focus

May 7

• FOMC voting member, Richmond Fed President Barkin speaks on economic outlook;
• FOMC permanent voting member, New York Fed President Williams speaks;
• L2 network Mode built on OP Stack launches governance token MODE, with a total supply of 10 billion;
• The hackathon co-hosted by TRON, HTX DAO, BitTorrent Chain, and JustLend DAO continues its submission phase until May 7;
• Bitcoin Devcon hosted by UTXO Management takes place from May 7 to 8 at Hong Kong Science Park;

May 8

• U.S. EIA crude oil inventory data for the week;
• Federal Reserve Vice Chair Jefferson speaks on the economy;
• FT Crypto & Digital Assets Summit;

May 9

• U.S. weekly jobless claims;
• Bank of England interest rate adjustment decision announced;
• Bitcoin Asia summit held in Hong Kong from May 9 to 10;

May 10

• U.S. one-year inflation expectations;
• University of Michigan consumer confidence index;
• Federal Reserve Governor Bowman speaks on financial stability risks;
• EigenLayer plans to open token claims on May 10, distributing 5% of token supply based on the March 15, 2024 activity snapshot;
• Biconomy airdrops ARB to BICO stakers, with claims ending on this day;
• Kraken will delist privacy coin Monero (XMR) from the Irish and Belgian markets, ceasing deposits from May 10;

May 11

• Federal Reserve Governor Barr speaks;
• China's April CPI year-on-year rate announced;
• Moonbeam (GLMR) will unlock approximately 3.04 million tokens, worth about $920,000, accounting for 0.35% of circulating supply;

May 12

• Decentralized GPU cloud infrastructure Aethir's airdrop event Aethir Cloud Drop continues until May 12;
• Jupiter LFG Launchpad's second phase project UpRock plans to launch reputation proof and TGE events on May 12;

5. Conclusion

Last week, although the crypto market experienced localized fluctuations, the increase in investment and financing activities indicates the vitality and long-term growth potential within the industry, especially as investor interest in RWA, GameFi, and Web3 sectors has strengthened, making these areas potential new market growth points; at the same time, the performance of BTC and ETH ETFs, as well as Tesla's support for DOGE payments, demonstrate that crypto assets are being increasingly perceived and accepted in broader financial and consumer markets.

This week, the U.S. EIA crude oil inventory data and one-year inflation expectations, the Bank of England's interest rate adjustment decision, and China's CPI year-on-year data will be released, which may significantly impact the subsequent market trends; as the Federal Reserve slows down the pace of balance sheet reduction, although inflation concerns remain, the improvement in market liquidity will gradually become apparent. If no extreme negative events occur, the entire market is expected to enter a valuation repair phase.

The current market still faces many uncertainties, but in the long run, with improvements in macro conditions and favorable trends, as well as increased acceptance in mainstream markets, the potential of the crypto market will be further unleashed, ushering in a new round of market activity.

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

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