Crypto Assets Market Trends: On-chain Activity Rises, Can Traditional Exchange Coins Rebound?

Recently, the cryptocurrency market has shown a flourishing trend, with Bitcoin's market share dropping from 60% to 55%, indicating the arrival of the altcoin season. Several sectors have demonstrated remarkable performance: artificial intelligence agency projects are leading the trend, and a certain virtual protocol's market capitalization once exceeded $300 million; the AI projects in a certain public chain ecosystem also surpassed the $1 billion mark. In terms of derivatives trading, the total open interest reached a new high of $4.3 billion. Even the previously quiet NFT sector has become active again, with several well-known NFT projects issuing tokens in succession, driving up the prices of blue-chip NFT projects in the Ethereum and Solana ecosystems.

Although the current market hotspots are mainly focused on on-chain projects, this does not mean that the tokens of centralized exchanges have been forgotten by the market. In fact, there is another potential catalyst in the current bull market that cannot be ignored: Trump may be elected president of the United States again.

If Trump returns to the White House, it will greatly increase the exposure of Crypto Assets in mainstream society. This could be followed by a more完善的法规框架和更宽松的监管环境, which will help attract more traditional financial capital into the Crypto Assets field. The continuous net inflow of funds into Bitcoin and Ethereum spot ETFs is a clear signal. It is worth noting that financial projects related to the Trump family have recently made significant purchases of various DeFi-related tokens within the last month, including ETH, CBBTC, AAVE, LINK, ENA, and ONDO.

So, how will the tokens purchased by Trump-related projects perform in the future? What common characteristics do they share? What other potential related concept coins are worth paying attention to? Let's analyze them together.

Purchase Record Overview

Starting from November 30, Trump's related financial projects have invested a total of 44.75 million USD to purchase Crypto Assets. As of December 18, all purchased coins are in a profitable state.

Interestingly, unlike traditional institutions that typically prefer Bitcoin, the project holds a significantly larger amount of Ethereum compared to Bitcoin, which may reflect their more optimistic outlook on the future trends of Ethereum.

• AAVE, as the world's largest decentralized lending platform, currently has a total locked value of (TVL) close to $40 billion, setting a historical high. The token has risen by 35% in the last 7 days. In addition, the community of Trump-related projects has passed a proposal to collaborate with AAVE, which is currently undergoing a temporary review phase at AaveDAO. If the proposal is ultimately approved, it will bring new users and more practical benefits to AAVE.

• LINK is an established oracle project. On November 14, the Trump-related project announced that it would use Chainlink as its on-chain data and cross-chain connectivity standard, viewing it as a secure solution to drive the large-scale application of DeFi.

• The development of ENA is closely related to the current bull market. As its stablecoin USDe derives its yield from arbitrage between futures and spot markets, the more optimistic the market sentiment and the higher the Ethereum funding rate, the more Ethena can benefit. Recently, the project's TVL has surpassed $6 billion, setting a new record. In terms of products, they have also partnered with a large asset management company to launch the RWA stablecoin USDtb, which is based on government bond yields, alleviating concerns in the market about the potential death spiral if the funding rate turns negative.

• ONDO is currently the leader in the physical asset ( RWA ) sector. After a large asset management company announced the launch of the BUIDL fund, Ondo Finance invested over $95 million, becoming the largest holder. Whether in terms of compliance, orthodoxy, capital scale, or market recognition, ONDO is the best choice in the current RWA sector.

In addition to the above-mentioned holding coins, COW is also worth mentioning. The Trump-related project traded all these tokens through a certain DEX protocol, so COW is also regarded as a Trump concept coin.

Tokens to Watch in the Future

Based on the investment logic of Trump's related projects, we can speculate on the targets they may focus on next:

The first choice is tokens that have a cooperative relationship, such as AAVE and LINK. Secondly, projects with a "clear business model" and "stable actual returns" are preferred. AAVE, LINK, ENA, ONDO, and others have clear product positioning, a large ecosystem user base, and actual profit models. This indicates that they are more inclined to invest in protocols that can bring long-term value, rather than chasing "novelty" or "pure concept" tokens.

The following are several potential investment targets:

• LDO: Considering that Trump's related projects have a much higher holding of ETH compared to BTC, it is evident that they are very optimistic about the long-term potential of Ethereum. With the maturation of Ethereum's staking mechanism, combined with the possibility of ETFs introducing Ethereum staking rates, LIDO, as the current largest liquid staking protocol, is undoubtedly the preferred choice. Its TVL reaches 37 billion USD, accounting for 30% of the entire Ethereum staking market.

• Pendle: Primarily focuses on the yield splitting market, allowing users to trade future yield rights. With the rise in Ethereum staking rates and the yields of protocols like USDe, the demand for yield trading markets continues to increase, making Pendle a focal point in this bullish market. Recently, Pendle's TVL has surpassed $5 billion and has established partnerships with several mainstream DeFi protocols.

• UNI: As a pioneer of DeFi Summer and currently the most widely used decentralized exchange, Uniswap is the absolute leader in this sector. Although its recently launched Unichain has failed to generate a strong market response, this does not affect users' reliance on Uniswap products.

Summary: Blue-chip projects are favored

Regarding the behavior of purchasing a large amount of Crypto Assets related to Trump, an analyst from a data analysis company stated: "This may be to gain more trust, or to promote the development of its own projects by attracting attention to these assets. Because if these assets perform well, the Trump-related projects may also benefit from it."

Trump-related projects actively layout blue-chip projects, which not only enhances the market's confidence in mainstream DeFi protocols but also injects more institutional funds into the Crypto Assets market. Such capital flow further stabilizes the market and pushes mainstream projects towards higher market value and development potential.