BlockBeats will organize the key industry news content of the week (7.1-7.7) in this article, and recommend in-depth articles to help readers better understand the market and learn about industry trends.
Important News Review
This week, the crypto market plummeted across the board, with Bitcoin falling below $54,000 and the total market value falling below $2.2 trillion
This week, the crypto market showed signs of decline again, falling all the way. On Friday, Bitcoin fell below $54,000, Ethereum fell below $2,900, and the total market value of crypto fell below $2.2 trillion. At the same time, the prices of a large number of new coins have plunged to a new low since their launch, with market capitalization and FDV shrinking significantly, and some currencies falling by nearly 30% in 24 hours. Related reading: "The 75" crash, the crypto market began to be fully liquidated? ", "You are preparing to buy the bottom, do you know that the whales have run away?"
Mt.Gox has officially started repaying creditors in Bitcoin and BCH
On July 5, Nobuaki Kobayashi’s latest email announcement stated that Mt.Gox has begun to repay some creditors in Bitcoin and BCH through some designated cryptocurrency trading platforms. Later that day, according to community feedback, some Mt.Gox creditors confirmed that they had received BTC and BCH compensation. Among them, Japanese creditor @VoiceOnFate posted on X that he had received BTC and BCH compensation from Mt.Gox through a designated exchange platform, and the number of tokens paid was 13% of the account’s holdings that year, but it was not sure whether this was the correct ratio.
On the same day, The Block reported that the time it takes for Mt. Gox creditors to receive repayments in Bitcoin or Bitcoin Cash varies depending on the custodian. For those who apply for repayments using a Kraken account, it may take up to 90 days; Bitstamp takes about 60 days; BitGo takes about 20 days. Both SBI VC Trade and Bitbank will complete the payment within 14 days. As of press time, Mt. Gox wallets still hold a total of nearly 140,000 bitcoins, worth more than $7.5 billion.
The German government's address has changed, and it has sold more than 2,300 bitcoins to exchanges this week
This week, according to Arkham monitoring, wallet addresses marked as "German Government" have transferred a total of 2,344 bitcoins to Bitstamp, Coinbase, Kraken, and Flow Traders. Large amounts of bitcoins were also transferred to multiple addresses. As of press time, the German government still holds more than 40,000 bitcoins. On July 5, according to CryptoSlate, German MP Joana Cotar strongly criticized the government's decision to sell $195 million worth of bitcoins, believing that the move increased market volatility and could have a long-term negative impact on the stability of the cryptocurrency market. These bitcoins originated from an investigation into the illegal website Movie2k.to. Cotar said on Twitter that the German government should reconsider this strategy and discuss with the United States the use of Bitcoin as a strategic reserve currency.
Related reading: "Has the German government started the "sell, sell, sell" mode? An inventory of BTC holdings and sales by governments around the world"
Opinion: Currently only 5 mining machine models can maintain profitability, which may mean that the price has reached the bottom
On July 5, Bitcoin fell to the $54,000 level, causing multiple series of mining machines including Ant S19 and Shenma M33S+ to reach the shutdown price. Currently, only five mining machine models on the market can bring profits to their operators, which may mark a "local bottom". According to F2Pool's chart, as long as the BTC price is above $53,100, Antminer's four mining machine models and one Avalon mining machine model can make a profit. Now the operating cost of all other mining machines is higher than the return received by the operator. Dovey Wan, partner of cryptocurrency fund Primitive Crypto, said: "Bitcoin miners are only one step away from capitulation, and the break-even point of S19 is 52,000. This is the perfect position for a local bottom."
Standard Chartered Bank: Bitcoin may hit a record high in August
On July 3, Standard Chartered Bank predicted that Bitcoin could hit a record high in August and reach $100,000 by the time of the US presidential election in November. The bank's analysts expect Trump's victory to push up Bitcoin prices, while maintaining their target prices of $150,000 and $200,000 by the end of the year and 2025, respectively. Geoffrey Kendrick, head of foreign exchange and digital asset research at Standard Chartered Bank, elaborated: "The logic here is that both regulation and mining will be treated more favorably under Trump." Standard Chartered analysts also shared predictions for other US presidential election scenarios. He explained that the "least likely" scenario is that Biden withdraws from the campaign at the end of July, which could cause Bitcoin prices to fall to $50,000-55,000.
Open source AI platform Sentient completes $85 million seed round of financing, led by Pantera Capital and others
On July 2, the open source AI platform Sentient completed a $85 million seed round of financing. This round of financing was jointly led by Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, Pantera Capital and Framework Ventures, and participated by Ethereal Ventures, Robot Ventures, Foresight Ventures, Symbolic Capital, Delphi Ventures, Hack VC, Arrington Capital, HashKey Capital and others. One of Sentient's core contributors is Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal. Sentient's advisor is EigenLayer founder and CEO Sreeram Kannan. Sentient is committed to building open source AI models through community contributions to address the centralization and security ethics issues in the current AI field. Sentient plans to launch a test network in the third quarter of this year and plans to use Polygon's technology for development. Related reading: "Sentient, which has raised $85 million: the ceiling of India-China cooperation, wants to build a decentralized Hugging Face"
Sony Group acquires crypto trading platform Amber Japan for billions of yen
On July 1, it was reported that Sony Group had completed the acquisition of Amber Japan and entered the field of crypto trading platforms. Sony's current business areas include games, music, cameras, etc., with a market value of more than 100 billion US dollars. Previously, Singapore market maker Amber Group acquired Japan's regulated crypto trading platform DeCurret in early 2022 and changed its name to Amber Japan. Related reading: "Sony acquires Amber Japan, an article reviews its Web3 layout history"
Binance may release important information on July 14
On July 4, Binance posted a picture with July 14 on its social platform with the caption “save the date”, implying that it will release important information on July 14.
This week, multiple currencies will have a one-time large amount of unlocking
This week, several projects will have a one-time large-scale token unlocking, including dydx unlocking about 8.33 million tokens at 8:00 on July 1, accounting for 3.12% of the circulation, worth about $11.18 million; Sui unlocking about 64.19 million tokens at 8:00 on July 1, accounting for 2.65% of the circulation, worth about $50.1 million; io.net unlocking about 7.5 million tokens at 21:00 on July 1, accounting for 7.89% of the circulation, worth about $23.55 million; Ethena unlocking about 14.89 million tokens at 15:00 on July 7, accounting for 0.92% of the circulation, worth about $7.26 million, etc. Related reading: "Inventory of tokens to be unlocked in July, the highest unlocking amount of a single coin exceeds $600 million"
Polkadot's first-half financial report caused controversy. Manta Network co-founder said that Asian founders had encountered a lot of discrimination in the Polkadot ecosystem
On June 29, members of the Polkadot community released the Polkadot Treasury Operation Report for the first half of 2024. The Polkadot Treasury spent a total of $87 million, but spent $37 million on promotion. If calculated at the current spending rate, these reserves will only be enough for the Polkadot Treasury to support it for another two years. Its revenue in the first half of this year was only 171,000 DOTs (currently worth more than $1.093 million), which is completely unable to cover the expenditure and only accounts for 1.5% of the expenditure. On July 2, in response to the controversy over Polkadot’s fiscal expenditure, Manta Network co-founder Victor Ji wrote: “As the founder of the project with the largest TVL and market value/FDV (non-DOT) in the former Polkadot ecosystem, I have to say that we have absolutely no desire to engage with the Polkadot ecosystem and its team. This ecosystem is highly toxic, has no real value for Web3, and does not focus on users or adoption at all. We are simply too busy to reveal the many facts of discrimination we as Asian founders have suffered in this ecosystem (a feeling shared by all Asian founders).” Related reading: “Spending $87 million in half a year, has Polkadot’s fiscal expenditure chaos made it out of pocket?”, “Who did Polkadot spend its $40 million promotion fee on?”
Fan Bingbing deleted the post after X posted "Personal comic IP project officially launched"
On July 3, Chinese actress Fan Bingbing posted on social media that her personal comics IP project was officially launched today, and she will work with well-known Japanese cartoonists and readers on Web3 social platforms and X to create a joint work. The next day, Fan Bingbing's Twitter account deleted the content related to "Personal comics IP project officially launched".
This week's hot articles
"75" plunge, has the crypto market started a full liquidation? "
After Bitcoin fell below $57,000 on July 3, it fell below $55,000 today, and Ethereum fell below $3,000. The crypto market fell across the board, with ETH and SOL falling 9% in 24 hours, and popular targets such as OP, AVAX, WLD, and ENS falling more than 15%. A large number of new coins such as AEVO, ZK, W, REZ, SAGA, OMNI, and IO plummeted by more than 20%, hitting a new low since their launch, and their market value and FDV shrunk significantly. The market value of the crypto market has fallen by $2.2 trillion in the past two days, and the currency circle has ushered in a new anniversary. "Glassnode: Multiple indicators have fallen to historical lows, and greater fluctuations may occur in the short term"
Despite the sideways or falling price of Bitcoin, a large portion of the market remains in profit, while short-term holders have borne most of the losses. By combining on-chain pricing models and technical indicators, we explore what the market could look like in the future. Volatility continues to compress historically, which indicates investor apathy but also suggests that greater volatility may be ahead.
"While others are still looking for numbers, what books are people at a16z Crypto reading?"
What books are a16z employees reading? On June 28, a16z crypto updated the article "Some books we're reading this summer 2024" on its official website. The editor did a simple translation and sorted it out, and put the books related to investment/finance/technology in front.
《If Pump.fun becomes the "fast hand in the cryptocurrency circle"》
Pump.fun is the most special product in this cycle. Since its launch more than 4 months ago, more than 1.17 million tokens have been issued on Pump.fun, and the cumulative revenue has exceeded 50 million US dollars. How to understand this number? Compared with Uniswap, the top traffic product in the previous bull market, it is estimated that Uniswap Labs has an annual revenue of about 25 million to 30 million US dollars. Pump.fun is not a typical Web3 project. It does not have a complex token economics model or a DAO governance mechanism, but with precise market positioning, Pump.fun has created a business market that is sure to make money. "Sentient, which has raised $85 million in financing: The ceiling of India-China cooperation, wants to create a decentralized Hugging Face"
On the evening of July 2, the open source AI platform Sentient completed a seed round of financing of $85 million. This should be the largest amount of financing for a crypto AI project announced this year. With top founders and luxurious investment, Sentient, a new decentralized AI platform, has at least a better chance of surviving and competing with the giants of Web2.
《Inventory of tokens to be unlocked in July, the highest unlocking amount of a single coin exceeds 600 million US dollars》
This article will show the unlocking activities of various relevant crypto projects in July 2024, and Worldcoin token WLD is leading in both size and value. Take a moment to check if the tokens you currently hold are part of the unlocking this month. If you participate in these token investments, please be cautious.
"Who did Polkadot spend the $40 million in promotion fees on?" On June 29, members of the Polkadot community released the Polkadot Treasury Operation Report for the first half of 2024. The Polkadot Treasury spent a total of $87 million. If calculated at the current spending rate, these reserves will only be enough for the Polkadot Treasury to support it for another 2 years. To the surprise of the community, Polkadot spent $37 million on promotional expenses alone, accounting for the bulk of treasury expenditures. Among them, $21 million was spent on advertising, including $10 million in sponsorship fees, $4.9 million in marketing and public relations companies, and $4 million in digital advertising. Event expenses cost $7.9 million, including $4.5 million in event expenses, $3.9 million in business development, and $3.2 million in media production. "The continuous decline of altcoins may be the best time to deploy DeFi"
As one of the oldest tracks in the crypto space, the Defi track has not performed well in this round of bull market. The overall increase of the Defi sector in the past year (41.3%) is not only far behind the average level (91%), but also lags behind Ethereum (75.8%). However, in my opinion, in the peculiar market background where BTC hit a new high and altcoins fell together, the Defi sector, especially the leading projects in it, may have ushered in the best layout time since its birth.
"Three ways to eat one fish: how to win the Magic Eden and Polygon trading reward event"
Recently, Magic Eden announced that it has launched a trading reward activity in cooperation with Polygon, with a total reward of 150,000 MATIC, about 84,000 U. At the end of last month, Magic Eden announced that users holding Magic Tickets can now use NFT to redeem "diamond" points. Crypto KOL NFT Big Banana published an article analyzing how to use this activity and Magic Eden diamond points to achieve the most cost-effective strategy.
Encryption is still a religion
The development of cryptocurrency has entered a deep water zone, and the importance of cultural and social attributes has been further enhanced. Technology can hardly become a real moat, and new terms and narratives have been criticized far more than supported. Faced with these sudden changes, many veteran players feel uncomfortable and even shout that cryptocurrency is "finished." But as community members said, "Belief is the only way out, which is why few people succeed." Matti's article The Optimistic Crypto Pitch explains why you can still believe in cryptocurrency.
《Do you see the opportunity of RWA? 》
According to Dune Analytics data, RWA has become the only crypto narrative that has achieved growth in the past three months, except for memes. In an environment where the market is stagnant as a whole, this performance has attracted our attention. In fact, since June last year, there have been voices about RWA, and after BlackRock launched the BUIDL on-chain fund, this narrative was completely ignited. "This new technology may make Solana no longer need L2"
Last week, Solana launched a new technology called "ZK Compression", which is said to reduce Solana's state cost and allow Solana to improve network scalability without going through L2. This is simply a slap on Ethereum's face with the three words "I win". Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko also appeared to emphasize that the technology "all execution occurs on L1 and is sorted by L1 validators." Justin Bons, founder and CIO of Cyber Capital, believes that "this obviously puts Solana far ahead of ETH in actual L1 scalability, solving one of Solana's biggest survival problems." "The current status of VC in the currency circle: VCs who "assemble" and "big leeks" who take over"
Retail investors attributed the loss to the token issuance strategy of "high FDV (future discounted value) and low circulation", and believed that VCs and project owners colluded to unlock a large number of tokens, which impacted the crypto market. VCs, on the other hand, "cried injustice" and defined the primary market of this cycle as "hell difficulty". Li Xi, partner of LD Capital, said that this year's books are profitable, but it's all paper value, because the shares belonging to VCs are still 0 unlocked. Except for the VCs who "assembled the game", most VCs are "big leeks" who took over. This article interviewed several representatives of the VC industry to try to explore the current survival status of VCs.
"Learn about the Moxie protocol in one article. Farcaster finally has a protocol-layer incentive token?" The Moxie protocol is a community-managed Farcaster economic engine that supports paid membership, monetization, member-only features and benefits, Farcaster native advertising model, built-in attribution (which can automatically identify and record the source of user behavior and contributions), rewards and revenue sharing, and many other features. The protocol is composed of multiple smart contracts and can be executed through frames, actions, and applications/clients. With Moxie, anyone can use it to add economic incentives to their Farcaster experience, such as frames or channels that only paying fans can participate in, private groups that only fans can join, and so on. "10 NFT projects worth paying attention to in July"
In the last week of June, all the old Ethereum blue-chip NFT projects rebounded. CryptoPunks rebounded by 24%, BAYC rebounded by 30%, Pudgy Penguins rebounded by 50%, and Azuki rebounded by 35%. Solana's top player Mad Lads also rose by 40%, and Bitcoin's top projects NodeMonkes and Bitcoin Puppets also rose by more than 20%. Is this a sign that NFT has bottomed out? The editor believes that it is too early to open the champagne at this time. However, we can first look forward to July, which has already arrived, and see which NFT projects are worthy of our attention.
"Crypto VC Canonical founder: Will AI Agent create a dystopian future?"
In this episode of the Chain Abstraction podcast, Altan, co-founder of the NAER ecosystem, and Jared, content director of the NAER Foundation, had an in-depth conversation with Anand Iyer, founder of early-stage fund Canonical. Canonical has invested in well-known crypto AI projects such as Gensyn, Ritual, Sahara, Nuffle Labs, and Tensorplex Labs. Anand pointed out that in the future, AI agents will play a key role in assisting humans to complete various tasks, and blockchain provides these agents with a secure and reliable operating environment. In an era of rapid development of AI, user ownership and privacy protection of personal data are crucial.
《Event Express | EthCC 7 will be held in Brussels, Belgium from July 8th to 11th》
EthCC 7 (Ethereum Community Conference) is a large annual Ethereum technology and community event that will be held in Brussels, Belgium from July 8 to 11, 2024. It is expected to have more than 5,000 participants, 54 sponsors, more than 350 speakers, and more than 300 peripheral activities. This article summarizes some of the peripheral activities of EthCC 7 for readers' reference.
