"Summer" — Charles Courtney Curran

Introduction:

The implied volatility of short-term out-of-the-money BTC put options remains higher than that of call options, indicating that market concerns about a near-term price correction have not been alleviated. However, the implied volatility of long-term options remains stable, reflecting institutional optimism about BTC's long-term prospects.

1. Investment and Financing Observations

Last week, there were 26 investment and financing events in the crypto market, a decrease of 36.58% compared to the previous week. The total funding amount exceeded $170 million, with no change in the week-on-week growth rate, keeping the scale relatively stable:

In the DeFi sector, 9 investment and financing events were announced, including the cryptocurrency trading platform Arbelos Markets, which completed a $28 million financing led by Dragonfly Capital;

In the GameFi sector, 7 investment and financing events were announced, including Web3 game developer Seeds Labs, which completed a $12 million seed round financing with participation from Blizzard Fund;

In the AI sector, 1 investment and financing event was announced, with the Web3-supporting AI platform ChainML completing a $6.2 million seed round extension financing led by Hack VC;

In the infrastructure and tools sector, 4 investment and financing events were announced, including Humanity Protocol, which announced a new round of $30 million financing at a $1 billion valuation, led by Kingsway Capital;

In the centralized finance sector, 1 financing event was announced, with the crypto trading company Raven, founded by a former Wintermute employee, completing a $2.7 million seed round financing led by Hack VC;

In other Web3/crypto applications, 4 financing events were announced, including the crypto prediction market Polymarket, which has raised $70 million through two rounds of financing, with the latest round led by Founders Fund;

From the week-on-week data, the number of investment and financing events in the crypto market last week ended a two-week upward trend and saw a significant decline, but the total funding amount remained relatively unchanged. This indicates that while institutions are cautiously positioning themselves, they are increasing their bets on the targets they invest in, with market enthusiasm focusing on the DeFi, infrastructure, and GameFi sectors. Among VCs, the most active institutions are still Animoca Brands, followed by Founders Fund, Framework Ventures, Endeavor Ventures, and Electric Capital.

About Polymarket

Polymarket is a decentralized information market contract trading platform that allows users to trade on the world's most controversial topics (such as coronavirus, politics, current events, etc.). Currently, betting on the 2024 U.S. presidential election is the most popular contract.

About Humanity

Humanity Protocol is a blockchain network that resists Sybil attacks through DID, utilizing palm print recognition technology and zero-knowledge proofs to ensure user privacy and security. It aims to provide an accessible and non-intrusive method for human verification in Web3 applications.

About peaq

peaq is a DePIN network supporting the Internet of Things (EoT) on Polkadot. peaq enables entrepreneurs and developers to build decentralized applications for vehicles, robots, and devices, while empowering users to manage and earn income as networked machines provide goods and services.

2. Industry Data

The number of new BTC wallets has dropped to the lowest level in six years

According to The Block data: Over the past week, the average daily number of new BTC wallets was 275,000, the lowest since 2018. Other related indicators have also declined, with miner revenue measured by hash rate falling to a historic low, and network transaction fees and on-chain transaction volume indicators also trending downward.

From the trend, the overall data shows a bottoming out, with expectations of data recovery and rebound as the market turns. Additionally, despite the decline in on-chain indicators, new protocols on the BTC network are attracting record interest from venture capital firms, laying the foundation for market recovery.

Six months ago, the average daily number of new BTC wallets was 625,000, more than double the current number. At that time, the launch of the BTC spot ETF, the development of the BTC ecosystem, and the halving event combined to push the number of new addresses to near historical highs.

BTC runes have dropped 99% from their peak at the end of April

Over the past week, the daily number of new BTC runes etched on-chain dropped to below 250, a 99% decrease from the peak data at the end of April. However, rune transactions remain the most active part of May, mainly occurring on markets such as Magic Eden, OKX, Ordinals Wallet, and UniSat.

The decline in the number of runes etched is consistent with the overall market activity and heat, mainly influenced by market conditions. However, it also indirectly reflects that runes have not been able to generate independent market heat like inscriptions did before. The future trend will still depend on macro market conditions and the activity of the BTC ecosystem.

According to the data dashboard created by RUNES on Dune: From April 26 to 30, an average of 14,700 new runes were etched daily, with a record high of 23,061 runes etched on April 26;

Since the launch of Runes on April 20, BTC miners have received a total of $4.5 million in transaction fees, averaging about $189 per day. To date, over 91,200 runes have been etched on the BTC chain;

Solana becomes the public chain with the highest TPS

According to CoinGecko data: Solana's on-chain TPS (transactions per second) reached a maximum of 1,504, making it the fastest large blockchain, more than five times faster than Polygon and 46 times faster than ETH. Despite this, Solana only achieved 1.6% of its claimed theoretical TPS (65,000 transactions per second). Additionally, the second fastest blockchain is Sui, which reached a maximum TPS of 854 in July 2023.

Comparing the data, the average TPS of non-EVM public chains is 284, while the average TPS of EVM and EVM-compatible public chains is 74, meaning non-EVM public chains are nearly four times faster than EVM public chains. However, in terms of stability and security, ETH-based public chains still dominate, and currently, the TPS of ETH-based public chains has not become a significant factor affecting or hindering their rapid development.

BSC and Polygon are the fastest EVM blockchains, with BNB Smart Chain (BSC) reaching a maximum of 378 TPS and Polygon reaching 190 TPS, making them the fastest Ethereum scaling solutions currently available.

3. VC Holdings

Note: The above data is sourced from https://platform.arkhamintelligence.com/, with the statistics taken on May 20, 2024, at 19:00 (UTC+8).

4. This Week's Focus

May 20

  • FOMC voting member and Atlanta Fed President Bostic will be interviewed by Bloomberg TV;
  • Federal Reserve Governor Barr will speak on bank regulation;