Autumn Bull Run Offensive: Analyzing Three Major Certainty Buys

I have been thinking about a question:

If this is the starting point of a new round of upward movement, then what is the driving force behind the bull market?

The cryptocurrency market is small, and there are too many factors affecting short-term trading.

Macroeconomic interest rate decisions? They could affect the US stock market and global financial markets, and the cryptocurrency market will definitely be the first to bear the brunt, but macro factors are difficult to predict. Apart from the Federal Reserve, almost no one can decipher the interest rate policy.

Emotional aspect? The rise and fall of the crypto market often reflects a reversal in sentiment, but the current sentiment has not reached extreme FOMO or extreme panic; the temperature is moderately warm. We can only say that the probability direction continues upwards, while a more important issue is that sentiment is often a lagging indicator of the market, making short-term predictions difficult.

There are also other experienced traders who analyze K-lines, which is not my strong suit. In my understanding, technical analysis can only serve as a reference; relying solely on technical analysis or a single technical indicator can easily lead to misjudgment.

So what is the main storyline? A statement from Teacher Xiao Ming (@RiceMaximalist) awakened me: the driving force behind this bull market is the buying of funds, including off-exchange fund purchases (ETFs and DATs) and on-exchange fund purchases (profit buybacks).

• Let's review the biggest protagonist of this round, Solana, based on this idea:

The main buying force for Solana in this round is the over-the-counter DAT. Taking the largest Galaxy's DAT as an example, as of September 12, its total fundraising amount announced is 1.65 billion USD. It has currently completed the purchase of approximately 1.75 million SOL, valued at 430 million USD, with about 1.21 billion remaining.

There are also reports that Galaxy purchased around 1 billion USD worth of Solana over the weekend, but there is no clear evidence that these purchases belong to DAT company. If they belong to DAT company, then DAT has basically completed all purchases.

Let's first calculate based on not making a purchase:

The current circulation of Solana is total circulation - Native Staking (staked - liquid staking) = 542 million - 378 million = 164m.

The remaining unpurchased DAT funds can buy approximately 5 million units, which is equivalent to 3% of the total circulation.

Considering that Pantera's new DAT has just been announced and there is still $1.25B in funds that have not purchased Solana, we estimate that this portion of the total amount available for purchase is also 3%.

Approximately 6% of the total circulation will be purchased in the near future, providing strong support for the price of Solana.

So how much can buying 6% of the total circulation raise Solana?

Comparing with ETH, the total ETF net inflow for ETH from July to August is 9.3B, and the total DAT market capitalization is 13B. We can roughly consider the market capitalization as the value of ETH that has already been purchased, which means that ETH worth 22.3B was purchased in these two months.

The total circulation of Ethereum is 123 million, currently valued at 492B (estimated at ETH 4000 USD), with a circulation ratio of 4.5%.

For the Ethereum 560B market, the external buying circulation is 4.5%, which has increased by approximately 76% from July to August (calculated from 2500 to 4400).

Comparing with Solana, assuming that the future circulation volume purchased is 6%, we conservatively estimate that the inflow of funds in the market for Solana is less than ETH (considering that market funds entered in July-August), the potential increase is at least 76% as an upper limit. If Galaxy has already exhausted its bullets, we conservatively estimate the increase to be halved, with at least a future space of 35%+, corresponding to a Solana price of 324 USD.

At the position of 240, despite external variables including macro policies, sentiment games, and on-site capital leverage, the potential buying volume is known and determined, and it still tends to be bullish.

• Now, following the same logic, let's take a look at the popular Pump:

According to sol, an average of 7,902 sol is repurchased daily, totaling approximately 1.5M repurchased per day, with 6.574% of the repurchase already completed.

It is known that the circulation of Pump before the unlock in July 26 is 43%, so at this rate, 17.84% of circulation can be completed this year.

This conclusion has a premise that the profitability of Pump can be maintained, which is also the biggest difference from Sol's buyback logic. So far, it has been on-site funds buying Pump.

Will the funds in the market continue to buy Pump? Or, to put it another way, can Pump continue to be profitable?

(Finally back to the business model analysis segment that VCs love to see)

First, the conclusion: I believe it is sustainable in the short term.

Reason 1: The founder has grasped the core of the business; he knows what business model to pursue, and his judgment on the business model has undoubtedly been validated.

The profits from Pumpfun for streamers, especially for mid to long tail streamers, are more than 100 times that of traditional platforms like Twitch, TikTok, Instagram, and other live streaming platforms. Countless live streaming guilds in Los Angeles, Kuala Lumpur, and HZ know how lucrative it is, and it's only a matter of time before they join Pumpfun to group together and boost their earnings.

Pumpfun is not aiming to attract the top streamers from traditional platforms, but rather those mid to long-tail streamers who cannot earn high profits on traditional platforms, as well as newcomers who have not yet started streaming but have potential for development. The team even "recently spent about $500,000 to procure a batch of 'streamer starter kits.' These kits include equipment such as cameras, monitors, and keyboard and mouse, to help newcomers start streaming."

Everyone can listen to the podcast interview by Delphi Digital, which is very informative. BTW I think listening to podcasts is a great way to understand the project team and founder's style.

Reason 2: There is still room for valuation improvement.

Pump currently has a circulating market cap of 2.7B, total supply of 7.7B, and 30-day revenue of 56m; compared to Hyperliquid with a circulating market cap of 14B, total supply of 53B, and 30-day revenue of 94M;

The circulating market cap of Pump / annual revenue = 4; The circulating market cap of Hyperliquid / annual revenue = 12;

Of course, the stability of Pump's income is far less than that of Hyperliquid. If the price of Pump drops or the market cools down, the income will definitely decline faster than Hyperliquid. However, even so, if we can ensure that the current income remains unchanged, it is also expected that Pump's circulating market value will double.

A larger imaginative space can be compared to the live streaming giant Twitch, which is currently valued at about $50 billion. They have approximately 70,000 to 90,000 simultaneous online viewers at any given time, while Pump's live streaming peak can reach 3% to 5% of Twitch's user base. Assuming a 5% calculation, Pump's market value should be $2.5B, which is on par with the current market value. However, the daily active users of the Pumpfun mobile app have already reached 35,000. If all of them can be converted into live streaming users, it could match half of Twitch.

Of course, in addition to this, there may also be DAT buying pressure for pump in the future, but for now, we will ignore it due to uncertainty about the scale.

Regarding the repurchase, Mr. Mai has also written related articles before:

• Finally, let's talk about Cards:

The business of Cards (collectorcrypt) is very mature in the offline card collection industry (collecting and exchanging game cards), also known as game cards/TCG (Trading Card Game). Among the TCG industry, the most famous is The Pokémon Company. Official disclosures state that as of March 2025, over 75 billion Pokémon TCG cards have been printed, with approximately 10.2 billion printed in the 2024 fiscal year (April 2024 – March 2025), reaching a ceiling level in the industry. The revenue of the entire TCG industry is also at the level of tens of billions of dollars.

The business of Cards is to RWA (Real World Asset) the physical Pokémon cards and utilize the blockchain market for the entire process of issuance, circulation, and trading. Users can choose to buy card packs to draw cards, and if they draw rare cards, they can sell them at a high multiple (similar to the logic of blind boxes).

The current revenue from Cards over the last 30 days is 4.9m, with 2.58m coming in the last 7 days, and transaction fees reaching as high as 8.12m.

The revenue from Cards will flow into the treasury for future buybacks and dividends for Cards token holders.

The current circulating market cap is 67m, the fully diluted market cap is 565m, with a circulating market cap/annual revenue ratio of 1.13, significantly lower than the valuation ratios of Pumpfun and hyperliquid.

Of course, the low valuation premium of Cards is also because its business moat has not yet formed. The revenue explosion of the business only started this week, and its sustainability still needs to be observed. Moreover, it has not yet established its own advantages against similar competitors Courtyard and Phygitals.

I am temporarily taking a small position to take a gamble.

These three are ranked by determinism as SOL > Pumpfun > Cards. I believe the growth potential of Pumpfun is slightly higher than or equal to Cards, and higher than Solana.

Regardless of the outcome of this week's Federal Reserve meeting, funds are beginning to reposition, with a priority still on selecting cash flow-generating projects such as Hyperliquid, Pumpfun, and Cards.

When the elusive narrative fails to generate FOMO, people tend to believe in projects that actually create profits, which can be seen as a sign of progress for the industry.