With the popularity of on-chain coins, can exchange tokens keep up?

Recently, Bitcoin's market share has dropped from 60% to 55%, marking the arrival of the altcoin season. Market hotspots are emerging, making it a flourishing scene: the market value of Virtuals Protocol in the AI Agent field once surpassed $300 million; the ai16z project in the Solana ecosystem also exceeded $1 billion in market value; the Hyperliquid ecosystem coin HYPE achieved more than a tenfold increase. In terms of products, the exchange's open interest has reached a new high, exceeding $4.3 billion. Even the NFT sector, which was once overlooked by the market, has seen some movement, with multiple well-known projects issuing tokens, driving up many blue-chip NFT projects in the ETH and SOL ecosystems.

From these hotspots, it can be seen that the current market attention is mainly focused on on-chain projects. So, have the tokens of centralized exchanges really been forgotten by the market?

This is not the case. There is another narrative in this bull market that cannot be ignored: a former president may be elected again.

This potential event means that cryptocurrencies will further enter the public eye. The improvement of regulations and the relaxation of supervision are conducive to external funds entering the cryptocurrency market. This trend can be seen from the continuous net inflow of funds into Bitcoin and Ethereum spot ETFs. Furthermore, a political family's cryptocurrency project, World Liberty Financial, has led by example, making large purchases of DeFi-related coins within a month, including: ETH, CBBTC, AAVE, LINK, ENA, and ONDO.

So, after World Liberty Financial buys these coins, how do their price performances look? What common characteristics do these tokens share? Are there any related concept coins worth paying attention to? Let's analyze them together.

Purchase Record Overview

Starting from November 30, World Liberty Financial has invested a total of 44.75 million USD to purchase cryptocurrencies. As of December 18, all the coins they hold are in a profitable state.

Interestingly, unlike traditional institutions that focus more on Bitcoin, World Liberty Financial holds a significantly larger amount of ETH compared to Bitcoin. This may indicate their more optimistic outlook on the future price trend of Ethereum.

AAVE, as the leading lending platform in the entire market, is the project with the highest TVL ranking among all protocols, with a deposit scale nearing $40 billion, setting a historical high. Its coin price has increased by 35% within seven days. Additionally, the World Liberty Financial community has passed a proposal to collaborate with AAVE, which is currently undergoing the TEMP CHECK phase at AaveDAO. If the proposal is ultimately approved, it will bring new users and more actual revenue to AAVE.

LINK is a well-known oracle project. On November 14, World Liberty Financial announced that it would adopt a certain oracle as the standard for its on-chain data and cross-chain connections, serving as a secure way to bring DeFi into the next phase of mass adoption.

The development of ENA is closely related to the current bull market. Since the yield of USDe comes from arbitrage between futures and spot, the more optimistic the market sentiment, the higher the Ethereum funding rate, and Ethena can benefit from it. Recently, its TVL has surpassed 6 billion USD, setting a new historical high. In terms of products, they have also collaborated with a large asset management company to launch the RWA stablecoin USDtb based on government bond yields, which alleviates market concerns that a negative funding rate could lead the protocol into a death spiral.

ONDO is currently the leading project in the 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. In terms of compliance, legitimacy, capital scale, and market recognition, ONDO is the best choice in the current RWA sector.

In addition to the aforementioned coins, it is worth mentioning COW. World Liberty Financial specifically used a certain protocol for trading when purchasing these coins, so COW is also regarded as a related concept coin.

Coins to Pay Attention to in the Future

By analyzing World Liberty Financial's investment strategy, we can speculate on the targets they may focus on next.

First, they seem to prefer token projects that have cooperation relationships, such as AAVE and LINK. Secondly, they value "clear business models" and "stable real returns." Projects like AAVE, LINK, ENA, ONDO, etc., have clear product positioning, a large ecosystem of users, and actual revenue models. This indicates that they do not blindly pursue "novelty" or "pure concept" tokens, but rather tend to invest in protocols that can bring long-term value.

LDO: Given that World Liberty Financial's holdings in ETH are far higher than in BTC, it is clear that they are very optimistic about Ethereum's long-term potential. As the Ethereum staking mechanism matures, coupled with the possibility of ETFs potentially introducing Ethereum staking rates, a certain liquid staking protocol has become the current favorite. This project is the largest liquid staking protocol in the Ethereum ecosystem, with a TVL of up to $37 billion, accounting for 30% of the entire Ethereum staking market.

Pendle: This project mainly focuses on the yield splitting market, allowing users to trade future yield rights. As the Ethereum staking rate and protocols like USDe see rising yields, the demand for yield trading markets continues to increase, drawing significant attention to Pendle during this bull market. Recently, Pendle's TVL has surpassed $5 billion and has established partnerships with several mainstream DeFi protocols.

UNI: A certain DEX is the pioneer of DeFi Summer and is currently the most commonly used decentralized exchange by users, leading the sector. Recently, they launched a new infrastructure project. Although the market response has been lukewarm, this does not affect users' reliance on their products.

Summary: Blue-chip projects are favored

Regarding World Liberty Financial's significant purchase of cryptocurrency, an analyst from a data analytics company stated to the media: "World Liberty Financial's acquisition of these tokens may be aimed at gaining more trust, or driving the development of its own projects by attracting 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 not only boosts market confidence in mainstream DeFi protocols but also injects more institutional funds into the crypto market. Such capital flows further stabilize the market and propel mainstream projects towards higher market value and development potential.