Research & Intelligence

While BTC hit a new ATH of $123k, altcoins have quietly gained momentum as Coinmarketcap’s Altcoin Season Index rose from 25 to 49.

Market-neutral strategies are designed to generate returns that are largely independent of the overall direction of the crypto market.

Robinhood unveiled tokenised stocks to the EU customers and the future launch of Robinhood chain, an RWA chain built on Arbitrum.

The first half of 2025 is a Bitcoin-led season. Bitcoin has seen significant growth in ETFs, open interest and adoption.

Ethereum is the dominant leader in stablecoins, DeFi, institutional layer-2s and real world asset tokenization.

Circle’s IPO was oversubscribed by 25x, and $CRCL jumped 168% on the first day listed on the NYSE.

The Bitcoin treasury sector saw significant growth as Microstrategy, Metaplanet and MARA Holdings continue to accumulate.

Bitcoin is back above $100k, the first time since early February

While the crypto market recovers this week, we look at the top two mindshare gainers — Virtuals (the leader in AI agents ecosystem) and Sui (the leader in Move language-based layer 1 blockchain).

Solana shows stronger technical momentum than Ethereum in the short term.

Mantra’s $OM token crashed 90% this week, wiping out $5.5B in market value.

Market liquidity has substantially contracted from Trump’s economic policy and tariff wars, with major indices experiencing the worst trading days since March 2020.

Circle recently filed an S-1 form with the SEC to list on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol CRCL.

There are three potential approaches to generating Bitcoin yield whilst maintaining a long Bitcoin position, namely basis trade, lending and options.

The crypto market suffered from Trump’s economic policies, and it is likely to continue in the short term.

The U.S. government hosted the first-ever White House Crypto Summit and Trump has signed an executive order towards the establishment of a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve.

Solana’s internet capital market (ICM) consists of PayFi, an efficient market making system and real-world asset tokenisation.

Coindesk’s Consensus took place in Hong Kong with 100+ side events from various blockchain ecosystems.

While most altcoins plunged in recent markets, Hyperliquid showed resilience with robust revenue and ecosystem growth.

Berachain launched its Mainnet and token on Feb 6, with BERA price once reached ~$15. Over 300 projects have built on Berachain so far.

As noted by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, AI agents are likely to be a multi-trillion dollar market.

Featuring our market predictions on Bitcoin, ETH, SOL, AI Agents, DeFi, RWA and more

Pudgy Penguins captured huge mindshare following its recent listing of $PENGU. Igloo also announced plans to launch the Abstract mainnet in Jan 2025.

The crypto community expects a DeFi Renaissance to come in the current bull cycle.

The crypto market saw a mild correction after BTC failed to reach $100k. The correction is driven by profit-taking by traders and long term holders.

Memecoins is the top outperforming sector in the bull cycle. Most large cap memecoins have outperformed Bitcoin YTD.

Bitcoin reached a new ATH of $93.4k. In addition, Blackrock’s $IBIT set a new record, hitting $40B asset mark in just 211 days.

Trump won U.S. presidential election, sending Bitcoin to a new ATH of $76.9k.

Built on Avalanche, third person shooting game ‘Off the Grid’ captured mainstream gamers’ attention, topping free-to-play charts in Epic Games Store.

GOAT is widely regarded as the pioneer in AI-generated memecoins — its price has doubled to $0.76 in a week.

A recent report titled “Asian Private Wealth in Digital Assets” shows that 76% of Asian private wealth is currently investing in digital assets, an increase from 58% from their 2022 KPMG-collaborated report.

Sui’s ecosystem saw massive growth in terms of users and total value locked. There’s a growing narrative for Sui as the potential ‘Solana killer’.

Apart from Solana, TON and BTCFi ecosystem, other key trends to watch include AI, modular ecosystems, Berachain & Sui, and real world asset tokenisation.

Singapore was full of crypto alpha last week, from Token 2049, Solana Breakpoint conference to hundreds of side events. Solana gained huge mindshare following its network upgrade announcements, key product and fundraise updates of its ecosystem projects.

Solana’s DeFi ecosystem keeps reaching all time highs, in the space of perpetual DEX, lending, prediction market and liquid staking. Solana’s Breakpoint is one of the most anticipated conferences during Singapore’s Token 2049 week.

BTCFi has reignited community interest following Stacks’ activation on Nakamoto upgrade. Babylon, Solv Protocol, Pendle Finance and CoreDAO emerged to be the key players in BTCFi.

Mini app market is a huge contributor to Wechat’s success. TON offers huge value-add to Telegram’s mini app market with seamless crypto payment, tap-to-earn functionality and revenue sharing in $TON token.

Compared to on-chain and market metrics, social and narrative mindshare are more dynamic in capturing short term market sentiment changes. Tron gained huge traction from the SunPump platform launch, plus solid fundamentals in revenue growth.

Crypto hedge funds outperformed spot BTC over the years, and quant-active and multi-strategy offer potentially the best long term performance.

The crypto industry market cap dropped 15% from a panic selloff — primarily driven by the recession fear and unwinding of yen carry trade. Elevated volatility levels could still be expected in the coming days ahead as VIX spiked above 50, suggesting cautious position sizing and risk controls.

LIDO Finance, Jito and Aave are three undervalued DeFi protocols with decent growth drivers.

Eight Ethereum spot ETFs (e.g. Blackrock, Franklin Templeton, Fidelity) began trading on Jul 23 and saw an inflow of just over $1B during the first trading day.

Electric Capital published a comprehensive crypto market map covering 1500+ Web 3 projects. We simplify that into three main categories: Layer 1 blockchain, Layer 2 & tooling and applications.

The crypto market is filled with both short and long term growth drivers, from Ethereum spot ETF trading, potential Fed rate cuts, to U.S. presidential elections and robust crypto industry development.

While most sectors underperformed Bitcoin and Ethereum, memecoins such as Dogwifhat and PEPE are exceptions. Other outperformers include TON, Pendle Finance and Arweave.

While Ethereum retains its leadership in crypto ecosystem, Solana is closing the gap with strong user growth, robust DeFi activities and huge momentum in memecoin trading.

Consumer applications (gaming and social) are essential in driving the mass adoption phase of Web 3, given their ease of entry and massive user base. Innovation of gaming and social protocols are the key catalysts in driving the next wave of crypto bull market.

With the upcoming Nakamoto upgrade, Stacks is set to unlock Bitcoin’s productivity with the introduction of sBTC, and idle BTC capital can be leveraged across Bitcoin DeFi ecosystem.

Bitcoin ETFs saw 17th straight days of inflows, totaling $15.3B since inception. According to Franklin Templeton CEO, the next wave of BTC spot ETFs belong to ‘much bigger institutions’.

We believe there are three main beneficiaries from the recent approval of Ether spot ETFs: Ether.Fi in restaking, Ethereum Name Services, and Ondo Finance in asset tokenisation.

The U.S. SEC approved Ether spot ETFs from BlackRock, Fidelity, Grayscale, Franklin Templeton etc. Meanwhile, the House of Reps passed the vote on FIT21 bill, paving regulatory clarity of digital assets in U.S. Bitcoin ETFs have drawn ~$14B net capital inflow from U.S. Institutions. Top hedge funds like Citadel and Millennium began to gain BTC exposure.

Artificial Intelligence, payments and DeFi are the top three use cases for blockchain technology and utility tokens.

As the dominant leader in native restaking, Eigenlayer continues to scale its ecosystem in liquid staking (LST), liquid restaking (LRT) and liquid restaking finance (LRTFi) space.

In the bull market, passive crypto indices are the beta play whilst investors are seeking alpha opportunities in actively-managed crypto hedge funds.

Had investors dollar-cost averaged $10,000 into bitcoin every month since Jan 2023, they would have been up over 130%.

Digital assets gain legitimacy in Hong Kong as the SFC reportedly gave conditional approval in Bitcoin and Ether spot ETFs. The approval signalled Hong Kong’s ambition to become the leading crypto hub.

Berachain addresses blockchain’s fragmented liquidity and MONAD attempts to solve Ethereum’s lack of scalability. Eigenlayer is the pioneer in restaking that offers additional security to blockchain protocols.

Real world asset tokenisation took spotlight after BlackRock’s tokenised fund launch. The sector ranked second and averaged 285% return in Q1. Ondo Finance is the top performer in the RWA sector, whereas Avalanche grows rapidly with notable RWA partnerships.

Crypto fundraising passed the $1B mark again in March, signaling bullish sentiment from Web 3 VCs. Key narratives in Web 3 investment include Bitcoin ecosystem, restaking and blockchain infrastructure — in particular, interoperability solutions.

Key narratives to watch in Q2 include Bitcoin halving, Stacks’ Nakamoto upgrade, restaking, as well as Solana’s memecoins and DeFi ecosystem.

The AI & DePIN sector has once again captured the community’s attention following Nvidia’s GTC AI Conference next week. From Nvidia’s booming revenue on AI business to the upcoming conference, most AI tokens ride on the strong momentum with decent price surges.

The current crypto market is significantly different from the previous bull market in 2021, namely institutional demand from Bitcoin spot ETFs, growth of new narratives and future upside in the upcoming Bitcoin halving cycle.

Uniswap’s UNI rose 84% during the week following the ‘fee switch’ governance proposal. The proposal, once enacted, will bring massive utility of UNI token, as token holders will be rewarded as Uniswap protocol’s fee grows.

While Starknet’s airdrop is successful, it drew controversies among communities and led to a drop in active wallet addresses. A well-executed airdrop distribution plan, as seen in Arbitrum and Optimism, contributes to consistent growth in user acquisition and retention.

Bitcoin surged past $52k and it is largely driven by massive inflow from Bitcoin spot ETFs.

Whales continue to accumulate, as seen in BTC traded at a fat premium in Bitfinex, alongside surging open BTC/USD longs contract.

Celestia has gained widespread attention since its mainnet launch in Oct 2023. Its token TIA rose 8x due to continuous ecosystem development, airdrops and staking landscape

The U.S. SEC has approved 11 Bitcoin spot ETFs — making Bitcoin easily accessible to mainstream investors in the U.S.