What are the core factors affecting the price as Ghibli continues to perform at a hundred times the speed?

Source: Talking about Li and Talking about the Outside

One of the hot topics these days is probably Ghibli. The rough cause is that a couple of days ago (March 25), ChatGPT announced a new 4o mapping feature, where you can directly use the image-to-image function in the GPT-4o chat window. You can upload an image and input simple instructions (like asking to turn this image into a Ghibli cartoon style), and then GPT can generate a new image based on the original image and the instructions. As shown in the picture below.

The Ghibli art style refers to the unique visual style exhibited in animated works created by the famous Japanese animation studio Studio Ghibli. Notable works from Ghibli include "Spirited Away," "My Neighbor Totoro," and so on.

Originally, this was just an update from ChatGPT, but as some big names began sharing their Ghibli-style images on social media, for example, the image shared by Musk on March 27 in X.

Thus, with the push from these big names, the popularity of Ghibli skyrocketed, leading to the emergence of a Ghibli token. As the topic and popularity continued to rise, coupled with some KOLs consistently promoting it, the Ghibli token (on the Solana chain) surged over a hundred times in less than a day. Today (March 28), two types of Ghibli tokens (on the Solana chain and BSC chain) have directly launched on BA (referring to Binance, same below). As shown in the picture below.

Of course, it is not recommended to chase the high now. Friends interested in this can search for more stories about Ghibli on their own; we won't discuss too much about MemeCoin here.

1. Is frequent listing saving oneself or saving the market?

Another thing that has garnered a lot of attention today is that BA has listed a number of MemeCoins at once, as shown in the picture below.

I remember in an earlier article, we expressed a viewpoint: filtering projects that have a chance to be listed on BA is a potential opportunity for better returns.

However, with the changes in this cycle, the previous method of selecting projects seems to have gradually become less applicable, as the listing effect of BA has diminished. Even if you buy a project listed on BA in advance, it does not guarantee you will make money; instead, you might get trapped. Previously, projects listed on BA could bring wealth effects, but now, listings more often mean a harvesting feast for retail investors.

Gradually, the voices questioning BA have increased… BA seems to have become a tumor in the industry and an accomplice in the project parties' harvesting of retail investors.

Perhaps CZ and his team have begun to realize this issue, so in recent times, we have seen BA starting a series of frequent actions, such as creating topics and promotions on the X platform, targeting some market makers (killing the monkey to warn the chicken), activities related to wallets (frequently conducting TGE to give users rewards), integration of Alpha with CEX, and so on.

Currently, BA seems to be engaged in a gamble, attempting to let the market decide the life and death of projects through massive listings (or high-frequency listings), including voting to delist tokens. It appears that some rules of the traditional bull market have changed; the so-called DEX can directly flip the table to become CEX (the Hyperliquid delisting of the JELLY token), while the largest CEX in the universe is trying to use some DEX methods to break through, but the current result is: DEX and CEX are counting cash and smiling at users, saying, "Hey, I've reshuffled the deck, let's see who runs the fastest. Are you ready?"

2. What are the core influencing factors of price?

In the previous article (March 26), we mainly thought about market uncertainty and opportunities, and the viewpoints we expressed were generally optimistic. Then a friend commented after reading the article (maybe they didn’t read it) asking: Is the market going to rise? What coins can I buy now?

I don’t know how this friend interpreted the reading to come up with two high-difficulty questions in a row.

Another friend commented: The indicators you posted are good; I’ve also seen the TOTAL2 indicator you shared before. I agree with your statement, and I also think altcoins will continue to rise; the altcoin season is coming.

These comments left me stunned; what did I say?

We always say that the market cannot be accurately predicted; any so-called predictive behavior is merely a guess or a probabilistic conclusion based on certain dimensions. If you only look at the title of an article or just a small segment of the blogger's speculative remarks in a long article and directly draw a 100% certain answer, that itself may be a dangerous signal for investment.

Take the TOTAL2 indicator mentioned by the friend above as an example. Most people know that this is the total market capitalization of all tokens excluding BTC (but not including most on-chain tokens; we explained this issue in our article on February 3). From the weekly level of this indicator, there have indeed been signs of continuous increase over the past three weeks (from a market cap of $768.2 billion three weeks ago to the current $806.7 billion), but this does not mean that altcoins will continue to rise. Compared to the overall market cap changes, we should pay more attention to changes in market liquidity, as liquidity is the essence.

Another important point is that for a specific project, market cap is the result of token price multiplied by supply. This means that the price of a token is not proportional to its market cap; just because the market cap increases does not mean the token price will definitely rise. For example, take Arbitrum (ARB): on January 12, 2024, the price of ARB was $2.3, and its market cap was $2.89 billion. On December 7, 2024, the market cap of ARB was $4.82 billion, but the price of ARB was $1.1.

Therefore, although TOTAL2 is often used as a price indicator, its role is more to reflect the overall market sentiment, while specific prices are more determined by the supply and demand relationship of the corresponding tokens. In simple terms, only buyers and sellers can decide the price of a token, not the market cap.

To give another simple example: the current market cap of Ghibli (Ghiblification) is $32 million, and the price is $0.03. So, if Ghibli wants to rise to $0.06, does it mean people need to buy another $32 million to reach that goal?

The answer is, of course, no.

The core reason here is the liquidity we mentioned above. Liquidity can be simply understood as the actual amount of funds in a trading pool, that is, the liquidity funds that can generate or complete orders in real-time, indicating how much of the corresponding token people can buy or sell.

In other words, if Ghibli rises from $0.03 to $0.06, the amount of funds required will be much less. Currently, Ghibli's pump pool is about $970,000, as shown in the picture below. This means you might only need to spend about $500,000 (or even less) to buy Ghibli to raise its price to $0.06, with a market cap of $64 million.

Of course, there will also be a trading volume issue. For example, in the above image, Ghibli's 24-hour trading volume is $5.5 million. This trading volume more reflects the activity or turnover frequency of trading; a large trading volume does not necessarily mean it will directly raise the token price.

In summary, most people may pay more attention to market cap (including trading volume), but in terms of factors influencing price, liquidity may be more important, especially for those tokens with low liquidity. Do not be misled by their high market cap or trading volume, as their prices can easily be manipulated by whales (large holders or project parties).

3. A brief discussion on Pendle and related topics

In the same previous article (March 26), we mentioned Pendle, and then a friend continued to comment: Why are you paying attention to Pendle? Can I still buy this coin now?

As for why to pay attention to Pendle, this is not really a question. If you have been following Talking about Li and Talking about the Outside for a while, you would know that we have previously focused on many projects, and Pendle is one we have mentioned several times in historical articles, as shown in the picture below.

As for whether Pendle can still be bought now, I cannot provide specific buying or selling advice (no specific trading guidance). If you feel the urge to trade Pendle, one of the simplest methods is to refer to the ideas in one of our articles from last year (November 12, 2024) for some necessary research and then decide whether to participate. In that article, we used AAVE as an example and listed several simple ideas and methods for quickly selecting projects. As shown in the picture below.

In fact, setting aside price factors, I have always believed that projects like Pendle and AAVE belong to the category of good projects because they can generate sustainable income and maintain relatively positive development, rather than relying solely on hype and air concepts to operate (like most MemeCoins).

Regarding the current market development trends or the hot topics people are focusing on, they can be roughly divided into two types:

One is ultra-short-term narratives, such as the rapid projects like Ghibli mentioned above.

The other is medium to long-term narratives, such as DeFi, Stablecoins, and RWA that we mentioned in our articles two weeks ago, as shown in the picture below.

So, why do we suggest that everyone pay more attention to opportunities in DeFi and RWA? The main supporting logic here is Stablecoins.

Many people are focusing on the price changes of specific tokens, but if we think carefully, we can also find that this cycle has a different aspect: we seem to be experiencing a Stablecoins Bull. According to the latest on-chain data, the current scale of stablecoins has reached $234 billion, rapidly developing since around October last year and continuously breaking historical records. As shown in the picture below.

Currently, Stablecoins is a very large industry, not only targeting the crypto market but also widely used in many undisclosed industries for settlement.

I wonder how many people still remember the White House crypto summit on March 8. Although the outcome of this meeting disappointed the market, we cannot ignore an important message revealed by Trump at the meeting: he hopes to sign stablecoin legislation before August.

In fact, the U.S. government has been publicly calling for a strategic reserve for cryptocurrencies, but one of the other things they want to do may be related to stablecoins. In short, the U.S. is actively promoting stablecoin legislation, essentially hoping to continue expanding the dollar's dominant position globally.

Moreover, we have recently seen some news indicating that some U.S. institutions are actively advancing their stablecoin strategies, such as Fidelity Investments planning to launch its own stablecoin, Wyoming planning to launch a stablecoin named WYST this July, and World Liberty Financial, supported by the Trump family, will launch a stablecoin USD1…

It can be anticipated that if friendly legislation for stablecoins is implemented in the U.S. in the future, it will undoubtedly further promote the global adoption of stablecoins, allowing the dollar to continue to become a universal currency in new fields.

Given this premise, what opportunities can we find?

There are several possible opportunities:

One is to participate in institutions or projects associated with stablecoin issuance.

For example, we all know that USDC is issued by Circle, which is composed of companies like Coinbase. Although we, as individual investors, cannot directly participate in Circle, from another perspective, indirectly investing in Coinbase's stock seems to be a theoretically feasible method.

Additionally, there are stablecoins like USDE and DAI, through which we can also indirectly participate by investing in tokens of Ethena, MakerDAO (last year MakerDAO was renamed to Sky, and Dai was renamed to USDS).

Two is to participate in on-chain DeFi, RWA, and other projects.

For instance, in the lending field, representative projects like AAVE, and in the yield field, representative projects like Pendle, etc. A significant proportion of the TVL in such DeFi protocols consists of stablecoins, and TVL is one of the important reference indicators for measuring the development of a DeFi project (in other words, as stablecoins increase, the protocol's TVL will also increase, which will further generate more fees and revenue, creating a positive cycle).

In other words, if stablecoins can continue to thrive, protocols like AAVE and Pendle will also benefit, and this may to some extent reflect on token prices.

Similarly, RWA is also a field that some institutions are actively laying out. Currently, stablecoins are an important component of the categories occupied by RWA (other components include U.S. Treasury bonds, private credit, real estate, etc.).

Of course, the above-mentioned opportunities also come with risks. For example, the stock prices of COIN and others may be affected by company performance, macro conditions, and other factors, while MKR, AAVE, and other tokens are similar. Do not make large investments (or even speculation) in those associated projects just because of the trend factor of stablecoins. Before making any decisions, more comprehensive research and investigation should be conducted.