The key driving force behind this bull market, which began in 2024, is traditional financial asset management giants led by BlackRock.
The recently launched altcoin season has seen traditional financial giants focusing on sectors like RWA and payments lead the charge. Among them, tokens closely related to traditional asset management giants like BlackRock, such as Ondo, CRV, and ENA, have posted impressive gains. During the significant market declines on the 10th and 11th, these tokens were among those that were relatively resilient or rebounded quickly.
Empowering traditional finance, especially in sectors and projects supported by traditional financial giants, may be one of the most certain directions in this bull market.
1. Ondo Finance (Ondo)
Last week, Ondo surged 40%, breaking through $1.93 and reaching an all-time high, currently pulling back to around $1.86. It has increased over 100% in the past month and its price has risen more than 880% in the past year; its market capitalization is nearly $2.6 billion, and FDV exceeds $18 billion.
As a leading project in the RWA sector, Ondo Finance's close collaboration with BlackRock has fueled its multiple rises.
Ondo Finance's two core products include the tokenized U.S. Treasury product OUSG. Previously, the vast majority of the OUSG portfolio consisted of BlackRock's iShares Short Treasury ETF (NASDAQ: SHV). In March this year, after BlackRock announced the launch of the tokenized fund BUIDL, Ondo also reallocated most of OUSG's assets to BUIDL. OUSG currently has a TVL of over $180 million and has provided clients with over $25 million in returns since its launch.
In addition to its close ties with BlackRock, Ondo Finance also has partners such as Morgan Stanley, Ankura Trust, Clear Street, and NAV Consulting in its ecosystem directory announced this year.
The core team of Ondo Finance is largely composed of members from well-known traditional asset management companies, and its co-founder and CEO Nathan Allman previously managed global crypto digital markets in Goldman Sachs' digital assets division. Other core members of Ondo Finance also mainly come from top asset management firms such as Goldman Sachs, McKinsey, and Bridgewater.
In addition to U.S. Treasuries, Ondo Finance will also launch Ondo Global Markets on February 6, 2025, which will tokenize stocks and bonds on-chain.
2. Curve (CRV)
As an established DeFi leader, CRV's recent rise is also related to its collaboration with BlackRock. Curve is an important partner for BlackRock's entry into DeFi.
On November 30, Curve announced that it had partnered with the blockchain network Elixir to expand access to BlackRock's tokenized money market fund BUIDL in DeFi. Users will soon be able to use BlackRock's BUIDL to mint Elixir's yield stablecoin deUSD. CRV then surged 60% from $0.5 to $0.8, approaching $1.3 on December 7.
As of the time of writing, it is reported at $1.16, with CRV having recently surged nearly 300%; market capitalization exceeds $1.4 billion, and FDV exceeds $2.5 billion. The historical highest price of CRV was $60.5, set in August 2020, and the historical lowest price was $0.18, set in August this year.
In addition to its cooperation with BlackRock, the market demand for Curve has surged after the bull market began. Curve also stated that within two weeks after Trump's administration took office, its revenue had doubled from an average of $268,000 to $581,000.
Recently, CurveDAO also launched a yield-bearing stablecoin Savings crvUSD (scrvUSD) to expand new use cases.
3. Ethena (ENA)
On November 29, stablecoin issuer Ethena and tokenization platform Securitize announced their upcoming collaboration to launch the stablecoin USDtb, to participate in Sky (formerly MakerDAO) lending platform Spark's $1 billion tokenization competition.
The reserves of the stablecoin USDtb will be invested in BlackRock's dollar-denominated institutional digital liquidity fund (BUIDL), making USDtb the only stablecoin backed by BUIDL.
As a result of this news, ENA has continuously risen from around $0.7. Last week, it broke through $1.14 and has now pulled back to $1.1, with an increase of nearly 80% in the past month; its market capitalization exceeds $3.2 billion, and FDV exceeds $16.5 billion.
Ethena is also a project in which Franklin Templeton has invested.
4. Velo (VELO)
Velo is a blockchain-based global settlement network that provides fast, secure, and low-cost cross-border payments for individuals and businesses. DWF Labs made a strategic investment of $10 million in it last year.
In September this year, Velo announced that it had integrated BlackRock's tokenized BUIDL fund into its USDV stablecoin, providing seamless trading and yield opportunities for over 1 million users in Southeast Asia.
VELO saw a significant increase of 50% last week, breaking through $0.03, and has now pulled back to around $0.026, with an increase of over 84% recently; its market capitalization is nearly $200 million, and FDV is nearly $800 million.
5. Chainlink (LINK)
Oracle networks are also indispensable for financial institutions in tokenized assets; Chainlink can help institutions connect on-chain and off-chain data, unlocking certain DeFi use cases.
This year, Chainlink has collaborated with multiple traditional asset management and leading crypto firms, Web2 giants, and Trump's crypto project.
Chainlink has partnered with Fidelity International and Sygnum to put the net asset value (NAV) data of Fidelity's $6.9 billion institutional liquidity fund on-chain in real-time. Chainlink also collaborated with Swiss asset management giant UBS and SWIFT to complete a pilot project, providing settlement for the subscription and redemption operations of tokenized funds through the SWIFT network.
21Shares has integrated Chainlink's proof of reserve system to provide transparency for its Ethereum ETF; Sony's L2 network Soneium has also chosen Chainlink as a partner.
It is worth mentioning that the Trump family's crypto project World Liberty recently announced that it will adopt Chainlink's on-chain data and cross-chain connection standards. In the past nine hours, World Liberty has also purchased over 40,000 LINK.
Last week, the price of LINK broke through $20 and peaked above $27, and after a brief pullback, it surged again today, breaking through $29, with a nearly 30% increase in 24 hours. The price of LINK has also risen nearly 100% in the past month. The last time LINK was above $20 was in January 2020. The historical highest price of LINK was $52.88, set in May 2021.
As of the time of writing, LINK's market capitalization exceeds $18 billion, and FDV exceeds $28.9 billion.
6. Avalanche (Avax)
Avalanche's token Avax is also one of the better-performing tokens among established public chains in the recent altcoin season. Avax broke through $55 last week and has now pulled back to around $50, with an increase of over 37% in the past month. Currently, Avax's market capitalization exceeds $20.5 billion, and FDV is nearly $36 billion.
From the news perspective, the recent rise of Avax, aside from the 'hype' hinted by Ava Labs' founder indicating ongoing dialogues with the new U.S. government for collaboration, may also be related to Avalanche's layout and growth in RWA.
Avalanche has a significant advantage in developing RWA; it allows developers or enterprises to create their own independent subnets.
There are actually many tokens being laid out by institutions, such as sui, apt, zro, etc., which undoubtedly provide us with direction, so I won't list them all.
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