State of the Market: Surge in GameFi and Bitcoin Ecosystem

GM, Anon! Welcome to this week's Crypto Market Update. BTC has faced a 2% price correction and is presently trending around $42,600. ETH has also dipped by 4.5% over this week and is trending around $2,265 after reaching a 2023 high of $2,350. In today's email, we will be focusing on the BRC20 and GameFi ecosystems which have shown exceptional promise.

State of Market: Bitcoin and GameFi Ecosystems On Fire

The crypto market has recently faced a significant security breach with the Ledger ConnectKit library, which left many decentralized applications vulnerable. This breach, resulting from a compromised software library, allowed malicious code to be injected into several applications, prompting precautionary measures like disabling front-ends by projects such as Kyber and RevokeCash. The attack, categorized as a "supply chain attack," raised serious concerns about asset security in the crypto space.

In terms of market inflows, digital asset investment products have seen a consistent increase over 11 weeks, reaching $43M, though this represents a decline from previous periods. Notably, Europe leads in digital asset inflows, followed by the US, with Hong Kong and Brazil experiencing outflows.

Bitcoin remains a primary focus for investors, with significant inflows contributing to its growth. Ethereum has also seen a resurgence with six consecutive weeks of inflows, reversing its previous trend of outflows.

Airdrops are becoming a notable trend in the market, being used increasingly for liquidity injection in user ecosystems, marking a shift from their traditional promotional role. In regulatory news, figures like Senator Elizabeth Warren continue to express concerns, highlighting the ongoing struggle between crypto industry growth and regulatory oversight.

The Bitcoin ecosystem is evolving, with developments like the introduction of Taproot Assets on the Lightning Network and Binance's listing of BRC-20 project Sats (1000SATS). The sale of a Bitcoin Ordinals inscription from the Honey Badgers collection for 10.4 BTC underlines the growing interest in Bitcoin-based NFTs.

Prominent altcoins like Solana (SOL), Avalanche (AVAX), and Cardano (ADA) have shown substantial growth, with SOL leading with 419% gains. These coins have managed to perform well despite pressures faced by major crypto like Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Blockchain gaming and NFTs are surging in popularity, with blockchain gaming accounting for 34% of the decentralized application industry. The NFT market has also seen a significant increase in trading volume, surpassing $994M.

The AI and gaming sectors in crypto are gaining traction, with coins like $RNDR and $FET showing notable increases in value. The largest gaming coin, $IMX, and others in the sector have made substantial gains, as have gaming launchpad coins like $SFUND and $GAFI. In the broader altcoin market, BitTorrent Token ($BTT) emerged as a top performer, with growing interest in utility tokens and SocialFi protocols like $DESO also witnessing significant growth.

For a deeper dive into this week's events check out the following reports by M6 Labs:

• Bitcoin weekly 

• NFT weekly

• L1, L2, & DeFi weekly

Blue Chip and Majors Overview

Avalanche

Avalanche (AVAX) has more than doubled over the last 30 days, with the price crossing $40 and the marketcap nearing $15B. This surge is primarily driven by its strategic focus on real-world assets and GameFi. Critical partnerships with traditional finance giants like JPMorgan Chase and CitiBank and the launch of the $50M Avalanche Vista fund for RWA development have bolstered this growth. Additionally, Avalanche's unique subnet architecture, catering to the rapidly growing $1.4T global gaming market, positions it as a leader in the GameFi sector.

Injective

Injective (INJ) has surged by 80% over the last 30 days and is nearing $30. The overall marketcap is reaching $2.5B. INJ has recently experienced a significant increase in social media activity as reported by AlphaScan data. This rise in activity has led to INJ becoming one of the most mentioned tokens on social media, ranking just behind Bitcoin. Additionally, 37% of all monthly mentions of INJ occurred in the past week, indicating a rapidly growing interest in the project, evidenced by the concentration of mentions in a brief period.

• Benqi(QI) has risen by over 250% this past week, with the token price crossing $0.025. Meanwhile, Benqi’s TVL has crossed half a billion dollars and is currently the largest platform on Avalanche. Overall TVL has jumped by >75% this past month.

• Vector Finance(VTX) has gone up by ~125% this past week and is presently the 5th largest platform on Avalanche. It accounts for >$50M in TVL.

• Solana (SOL) is still trending in the green, having jumped by 13% this past week and marketcap reaching $31B. A couple of days back, SOL dumped to $65, causing ~$20M in long liquidations. The price has recovered above $70 since then,

• Jito (JTO) is nearing $3, while the Jito platform has seen its TVL near $430M, thanks to the much-hyped JTO airdrop that happened last week.

• Orca (ORCA) has more than doubled its price in the past week and has crossed $5.50, with marketcap crossing $250M. Orca’s TVL has surged by 40% this past week and has crossed $120M.

• Optimism (OP) has performed admirably, with a 30% increase this past week. This surge is largely attributed to Coinbase launching futures trading for the OP token.

• Husky Avax (HUSKY) has skyrocketed by over 1000% this past month as its overall market cap approaches $13.5M.

• Kujira's (KUJI) market value has surged following key developments in the Cosmos network, notably the integration of Bitcoin via the inter-blockchain communications protocol, a joint effort by Osmosis, Nomic, and Kujira.

• Immutable (IMX) experienced a surge of over 50% in the past week, following VanEck's projection that IMX could enter the top 25 coins by market cap, buoyed by the anticipated release of high-profile games like Illuvium.

• Colony (CLY) has more than quadrupled its price this past month, with the token crossed $0.35 and the overall market cap fast approaching $35M.

• Beam (BEAM) has jumped by 50% over this past week as the bulls look to break past the $0.025 level. BEAM has also benefited from the VanEck report highlighting the GameFi sector's promise.

• Celestia (TIA) has soared over 40% in the past week, nearing $15. The increase began with speculation, even before Polygon's Tuesday announcement of integrating Celestia's "data availability" solution into its blockchain development kit.

• Echelon Prime (PRIME) has surpassed the significant $10 mark, registering a 14% increase in the last 24 hours. This follows a notable monthly rise from $5.87 to $10.20.

• DeFi Kingdoms (JEWEL) experienced a 14% decline over the past week, stabilizing at the $0.50 support level.

• ALEX Lab (ALEX) has surged nearly 140%, approaching the key $0.35 level, and has achieved a market capitalization exceeding $220M.

• Kamino Finance, now approaching a $130M TVL, ranks among the top five DeFi protocols on Solana, potentially indicating an upcoming airdrop similar to Jito's strategy.

Smart Money Movements

Smart Money has recently been taking profits and securing their gains. They utilize some of the profits to acquire fresh tokens with good growth potential.

Tokens

RWA

Smart Money added more $PLANET to their holdings following the news of a new staking model:

[PlanetReFi Tweet]

$TRADE

An all-in-one platform for everything RWA, $TRADE gained traction from Smart Money after Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong wrote about RWA:

[Polytrade Twitter]

[Brian Armstrong Tweet]

DePIN 

Smart Money is detected in $AIOZ as well, they're positioning themselves for the DePIN narrative.

AI

$AIFI has caught Smart Money's attention as the first DeFi Protocol aggregating yield using AI, check it out here.

BRC-20

Smart Money is taking profits on major BRC-20 tokens like $MUBI and $BSSB. So consider taking some profits off if you're up decently.

SocialFi

Smart Money began accumulating $FWB right after its launch, a p2p subscription model project on TG, can be a good play when SocialFi narrative gains hype again.

GameFi

$KAP is a gem in GameFi that Smart Money started acquiring.

Smart Money is also detected in $SHRAP, a gaming project market-made by DWF, and $NGL, an OG GameFi project which is still on top of their game.

Smart Money is taking profits on $PRIME, it has become a common activity among early whales that bought it early.

Layer1

$TET was among Smart Money's purchases this week, a brand new Layer1 that has recently gained attention:

[Tectum Twitter]

Yield Farms

The latest high APR Stablecoin farming strategy involves depositing $PLX into Liquid Loans, borrowing $USDL against the collateral ($PLX), depositing the $USDL into the stability pool, this pool offers 326% APR!

Note: If you want to implement this strategy using only stablecoins and not being exposed to $PLX, you can deposit stablecoins into Phiat on PulseChain, borrow $PLX against your stablecoins with a low borrow rate, and then use that $PLX to deposit into Liquid Loans.

Extra Finance on BASE has been popular among Smart Farmers too.

NFTs

Smart Money swept some Honey Comb NFTs as Berachain gained traction on CT again:

[OpenSea - Honey Comb NFTs]

Smart Money minted some Poglin NFTs as well; they're now live on OS, representing an innovative multimedia world backed by Animoca, consisting of anime and games:

[OpenSea - Poglin NFTs]