Original author: WOO X Research
Reprint: Luke, Mars Finance
Background: On-chain tokens are hot; can tokens on exchanges rise?
Recently, Bitcoin's market share dropped from 60% to 55%, indicating the beginning of an altcoin season, with various hotspots emerging, making it a time of flourishing diversity: led by AI Agent, Virtuals Protocol peaked at a market value of 300 million USD; within the Solana ecosystem, ai16z also surpassed 1 billion USD in market value, with Hyperliquid's token HYPE seeing an increase of over 10 times. In terms of products, the open interest on exchanges has repeatedly broken new highs, exceeding 4.3 billion USD. Even the NFT sector, which was almost forgotten by the market, has seen movement, with Magic Eden and Pudgy Penguins issuing tokens, driving many ETH/SOL blue-chip NFT projects to rise.
A simple overview of various sector hotspots shows that they all revolve around on-chain. So, have tokens on centralized exchanges really been forgotten by the market?
Actually, that's not the case. There is another narrative in this bull market that cannot be ignored: Trump's election.
Trump's election means that cryptocurrencies have officially entered the public eye. The improvement of regulations and the relaxation of oversight are conducive to external funds entering the crypto space, as evidenced by the continuous net inflow of funds into BTC and ETH spot ETFs. The Trump family's crypto project, World Liberty Financial, also leads by example, having crazily purchased DeFi-related tokens in a month, including ETH, CBBTC, AAVE, LINK, ENA, and ONDO.
So, how did the prices of the above tokens perform after World Liberty Financial's purchases? What common features do these tokens share? What other conceptual tokens are there? Let's take a look with WOO X Research.
Purchase record summary
The above table statistics show that as of November 30, World Liberty Financial purchased cryptocurrencies totaling 44.75 million USD. As of the writing date, December 18, all tokens held by World Liberty Financial are in a state of floating profit.
Interestingly, traditional institutions previously showed more interest in Bitcoin than Ethereum, but in their investment portfolio, World Liberty Financial holds far more ETH than Bitcoin, perhaps indicating a greater optimism for the future price trends of Ethereum compared to Bitcoin.
AAVE is the leading lender in the entire market and holds the first place in TVL among all protocols, with deposits nearing 40 billion USD, a historical high, and the token price has risen by 35% within seven days. Additionally, the community vote at World Liberty Financial has approved a proposal to collaborate with AAVE, which is currently at the TEMP CHECK stage in AaveDAO. If the proposal passes, it will bring new users and greater real revenue for AAVE.
LINK is an established oracle project, and on November 14, World Liberty Financial announced that it would adopt Chainlink as the standard for on-chain data and cross-chain connections, serving as a secure way to bring DeFi into the next phase of large-scale adoption.
The development of ENA is closely related to this bull market. Since the yield source of USDe is from futures arbitrage, the more enthusiastic the market sentiment and the higher the Ethereum funding rate, the more Ethena can benefit. Recently, the TVL has also surpassed 6 billion USD, a historical high. In terms of products, they have recently collaborated with BlackRock to launch the RWA stablecoin USDtb, with the yield source being government bonds. This product's launch also addresses market concerns about negative funding rates, which could lead to a death spiral for the overall protocol.
ONDO is currently the leader in the RWA track. After BlackRock announced the launch of the BUIDL fund, Ondo Finance invested over 95 million USD, becoming the largest holder. Whether in terms of compliance, legitimacy, funding volume, or market preference, ONDO is the best choice in the current RWA track.
In addition to the tokens mentioned above, it's worth mentioning COW. When World Liberty Financial purchased the above tokens, they only used Cow Protocol for the purchases, thus also being regarded as a Trump-themed token.
What tokens might they buy next?
After understanding the investment logic of World Liberty Financial, we speculate on the targets they may focus on next.
First, from their holding layout, it can be seen that it's best if the tokens themselves have a cooperative relationship with World Liberty Financial, such as AAVE.
LINK, followed by a 'clear business model' and 'stable real returns'. Tokens like AAVE, LINK, ENA, and ONDO all have clear product positioning, a large ecosystem of users, and actual revenue models. This indicates that they are not blindly pursuing 'novelty' or 'pure conceptual' tokens but are more inclined to invest in protocols that can bring long-term value.
LDO: Since World Liberty Financial holds far more ETH than BTC, it is evident that they are very optimistic about Ethereum's long-term potential. With the maturation of Ethereum's staking mechanism and the potential introduction of staking interest rates via ETFs, the leading protocol LIDO has become the current top choice.
It is the largest liquid staking protocol in the Ethereum ecosystem, with a TVL of 37 billion USD, accounting for 30% of the entire Ethereum staking market.
Pendle: Mainly focuses on the yield splitting market, allowing users to trade future yield rights. As Ethereum's staking rates and the yields of protocols like USDe rise, the demand for the yield trading market continues to increase, making Pendle highly regarded in this bull market. Recently, Pendle's TVL has surpassed 5 billion USD and has established partnerships with several mainstream DeFi protocols.
UNI: Uniswap is the origin of DeFi Summer and is currently the most frequently used decentralized exchange, leading this track. Recently, they launched Unichain, but the market's response has been lukewarm; however, this does not diminish users' reliance on Uniswap products.
Conclusion: Blue-chip projects = presidential trading projects
Regarding World Liberty Financial's large-scale token trading, Nansen analyst Nicolai Søndergaard told Bloomberg: 'World Liberty Financial's behavior of purchasing tokens may be to gain more trust or to promote the development of its own projects by drawing attention to these assets. Because if these assets perform well, World Liberty Financial could also benefit from it.'
World Liberty Financial is actively laying out blue-chip projects, which has not only increased market confidence in mainstream DeFi protocols but also injected more institutional funds into the crypto market. This flow of funds further stabilizes the market and pushes mainstream projects towards higher market values and development potential.
