#ChartoftheDay Last Friday, Friend.Tech, one of the most successful #SocialFi projects in crypto, launched its native token “FRIEND” while unveiling Version 2 of the platform. According to CoinGecko data, the token’s price fell from $3.03 to as low as $0.89 on its first day of trading.

A notable new feature of V2 is Money Club, which allows communities to manage shared treasuries and mint tradable on-chain collectibles, like NFTs. The platform also rolls out a new point system designed to reward users for their contributions and interactions on the platform. However, all these features fail to spark too much enthusiasm so far. Also, users reported glitches when trying to access the new Money Club feature.

Friend.Tech works by allowing social media personalities, known as “Subjects," to offer “shares” to their community, granting them access to private chats. When debuted last August, Friend.Tech was an immediate hit, realizing a meteoric rise to over 100,000 users and an impressive $2 million in revenue within its inaugural month.

However, the hype soon ebbed away by the end of 2023. According to a Dune Analytics dashboard that measures the daily buying and selling volume of “Subjects,” the buying and selling activities became active again in April when the platform announced its token launch. However, after the token launch, daily selling volumes hit record highs.

The selloffs of both the FRIEND token and “Subjects” reflect the outflow of users now that the airdrop anticipation or financial incentives are gone. While token dumping and price dips after airdrops are not new, will Friend.Tech be able to reverse the long-term downturn?

[Bing Ventures' Chart of the Day] On April 30, Hong Kong launched six spot #Bitcoin and #ether ETFs, becoming the first in Asia to debut spot cryptocurrency ETFs. The six ETFs were issued by three institutions, including China Asset Management, Bosera Asset Management, and Harvest Global Investments. On their first day of trading, they achieved a total transaction volume of about 87.58 million HK dollars.

The debut came three months after the US launched its first spot #BTC ETFs. These have drawn substantial capital from traditional financial institutions, contributing to a surge in bitcoin’s price earlier this year. The first mover advantage in Asia has brought this debut great attention. It is also believed to serve as a regulatory seal of approval for crypto assets from Hong Kong. Experts expect the products to attract the interest of institutional and retail investors in the region.

Amid the current geopolitical situation and macroeconomic conditions, several countries’ fiat currencies are experiencing great volatility. #Crypto ETFs could offer investors more options.

#BitcoinETFs #EthereumETF

#ChartoftheDay Renzo’s liquid restaking token ezETH suffered a significant depeg on April 24. The incident saw the token’s price briefly fall to a low of $688, representing a nearly 80% depeg from its price parity with Ether (#ETH), according to Dexscreener data.

The incident happened after #Renzo unveiled its token distribution plan for its governance token #REZ through a #Binance announcement. Of the 10 billion total token supply, 10% will go to airdrops, with half of that or 5% to be distributed to early users who have participated in the first season of their ezPoints Campaign. Additionally, 31.65% will go to investors and advisors, 20% to the team, 20% to the DAO treasury, 13.44% to Renzo's foundation, 2.5% to Binance Lanchpool and 2.5% to liquidity allocation.

The distribution plan caused community criticism due to its disproportionately small allocation for airdrops and the team’s use of an unequally sized pie chart to represent the asset allocation, among other things. Most importantly, according to the claim timeline, Binance Launchpool will end, and trading will begin before the date when stakers can claim airdrop. This means Binance stakers can sell on the stakers.

These were believed to cause a wide sell-off of ezETH by usersing wanting to get back $ETH to farm other #LRTs.Right before the depeg, there was only $27 million in ETH paired aginast ezETH in mainnet swapping pools. Such low liquidity combined with the fact that direct withdrawal is not yet enabled on Renzo allowed the price of ezETH to fall massively in the face of huge sell pressure. Forced liquidations on other protocols that integrated with Renzo including farming platform Gearbox and lending platform Morpho worsened the depeg too.

According to the latest news, the Renzo team elected to change airdrop conditions, increasing the distribution volume for the season 1 airdrop from 5% to 7% and from 30% to 32% for community. Additionally, the claim date has been postponed to April 30 and tokens can be requested 1 hour before the asset is listed on the Binance exchange.

#BingVentures #ChartoftheDay Liquid staking and restaking remain Ethereum's major narratives. According to a recent report from Messari, liquid restaking #TVL surged 2800% in Q1 2024, reaching $8.2 billion.

EtherFi maintained its leading position, with market share growing to over 39%, followed by Renzo Protocol and Puffer Labs. Additionally, in the quarter, EtherFi launched its token, $ETHFI , on Binance Launchpool, which gained extra traction amid favorable market conditions.

Also, multiple LRT protocols, including EtherFi and Puffer, announced new fundings in Q1 with good valuations and investment round sizes, reflecting market enthusiasm for this segment.

Currently, the percentage of $ETH coins locked in staking has reached 27% and keeps surging, increasing centralization concerns. Also, the rehypothecation nature of #LRTs is controversial because it potentially poses systematic risks to the entire #Ethereum ecosystem.

#ChartoftheDay Despite the impressive initial traction, Friend.Tech, the viral social #dApp launched in August 2023, has slumped into low activity and revenue since last October.
But Friend.Tech v2 is coming this week. Will it be able to regain its popularity and expand the frontier of #SocialFi again?

💫Let’s examine the updates it is installing, according to insider leaks and reports from John Wang (@j0hnwang), Bankless DAO, etc.

1/ Tradable Collectibles and Native DEX: Users can easily issue and trade via parameterizable bonding curves beyond keys, monetizing the user attention they capture directly. It will also have an embedded DEX to support the trading of all these assets.

2/ New Chatroom Features: Chatrooms can be customized with options like pools, raffles, collections, and visual themes. Functions like reactions, notifications, pinned messages, and tagging will enhance user interaction and engagement.

3/ Enhanced Accessibility: v2 will allow users to sign up with Reddit accounts and access a room with fractional keys and temporary passes. It will also have keyword search and keys recommendations to improve discovery.

4/ Enhanced Security: Integration with cold wallets and the addition of two-factor authentication to bolster user trust and safety.

5/ Performance Enhancements: Improvements in the platform's infrastructure to ensure faster loading speeds and a smoother user experience.

#ChartoftheDay #Bitcoin's price increased 69% QoQ in Q1 2024, demonstrating the great success of spot BTC ETFs. According to Messari, spot BTC ETFs saw over $12 billion in inflows, or 212,000 BTC, in Q1, bringing the total AUM to 831,488 BTC.

#GBTC of Grayscale, which had existed as a BTC Trust before the approval, saw its market share reduced to below 50% as the nine newly approved ETFs took in 493,807 BTC in Q1. BlackRock's #IBTC and Fidelity's #FBTC were the top two performers in Q1; each had $13.9 billion and $7.5 billion inflows, respectively.

From the chart, we can see that daily flows were high at the beginning but had significantly weakened by the end of March. This reflects the waning interest of investors, especially #TradFi institutions. Given the macroeconomic factors, such as elevated crude oil prices due to geopolitics, and rising precious metal prices, whether the appeal of spot BTC ETFs will be sustained is still being determined.

Most recently, Hong Kong regulators approved the launch of spot Bitcoin and ether ETFs. Whether funds in #HongKong will buy in is also uncertain. However, new narratives arising in relation to spot #ETH ETFs and Bitcoin would be worth watching.