Key Points of Attention Value Market

Market Trends

macro environment

In December 2024, the U.S. inflation data was released, showing an overall trend of slowdown. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose by 2.9% year-on-year, while the core CPI increased by 3.2% year-on-year. Although the overall CPI increased by 0.4% month-on-month, reaching a recent high, the core CPI only rose by 0.2% month-on-month. The data reflects that factors such as a decrease in hotel accommodation prices, a slowdown in the increase of healthcare services, and moderate rent increases have effectively suppressed inflationary pressures.

This situation eased the bond market sell-off and rekindled market expectations for a Federal Reserve interest rate cut. Although investors generally believe that a rate cut may only have a chance after June, U.S. stock and bond markets rebounded accordingly. The S&P 500 index rose nearly 2%, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average surged over 700 points. The cryptocurrency market also performed strongly, with Bitcoin returning to the $100,000 mark, reflecting its sensitivity to macroeconomic trends.

web3 field

Starting in 2025, cryptocurrency trading in the United States will face third-party reporting requirements for the first time. All transaction information conducted on centralized trading platforms will be submitted directly to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). According to the new regulations, institutions such as custodial trading platforms, digital asset wallet providers, cryptocurrency ATM operators, and digital asset payment processors must track users' buying and selling transactions throughout the year and submit relevant reports to users and the IRS at the beginning of 2026.

The specific implementation timetable shows that the report on the cost benchmark information for crypto assets will begin in 2026, while the report on peer-to-peer transactions on decentralized platforms will be postponed until 2027, only requiring the total transaction amount to be reported. In addition, newly listed Bitcoin spot ETF trades will also be reported through forms 1099-B or 1099-DA, including share transactions and taxable events generated within the fund.

Hot Events

macro environment

Global pension funds are beginning to allocate Bitcoin, focusing on emerging asset classes. According to reports, several pension funds are trying to purchase Bitcoin. Pension funds in Wisconsin and Michigan have become major holders of U.S. stock funds focused on cryptocurrencies. As of the end of September, the Wisconsin Investment Board became the 12th largest shareholder of a certain Bitcoin ETF, with a holding value of approximately $155 million, while Michigan was the sixth largest shareholder of a certain Ethereum ETF, with a holding value of $12.9 million.

Some pension fund management institutions in the UK and Australia have also made small allocations to Bitcoin through funds or derivatives. A UK pension consulting firm has facilitated the first Bitcoin transaction, with a small pension plan directly investing about £1.5 million in Bitcoin. In addition, more than 50 individual savers have expressed a desire to fully transfer their pensions to cryptocurrencies. Although cryptocurrency investment remains a minority in the pension industry, and most advisors are cautious about their clients entering this field, an increasing number of pension funds are beginning to pay attention to this emerging asset class.

web3 field

On January 16, the Financial Services Commission (FSC) of South Korea announced the first unfair trading case following the implementation of the "Virtual Asset User Protection Act." The law will take effect in July 2024 and requires local virtual asset service providers (VASP) to report abnormal transactions and investigate unfair trading patterns.

According to the disclosure from FSC, the suspect manipulated the market using the "pump and dump" technique by placing multiple buy orders to drive up the price of a certain cryptocurrency, and then quickly selling off large amounts of pre-purchased assets. The entire manipulation process is usually completed within 10 minutes, resulting in significant price fluctuations of the underlying asset and illegally profiting hundreds of millions of Korean Won within a month. This case marks an important step for South Korea in combating misconduct in the cryptocurrency market.

Hot Narrative

The price of XRP has first broken through $3 in the past 24 hours, reaching a new high since 2018, with a 15-day increase of 40%. Currently, XRP is only 17% away from its historical high of $3.84, and its market capitalization has exceeded $170 billion, surpassing a certain asset management giant.

The recent surge is mainly driven by expectations of cryptocurrency-friendly policies and the push for regulatory reforms in digital assets in the United States. Traders on digital asset platforms point out that the spike in XRP is attributed to new partnerships, the launch of the Ripple stablecoin RLUSD, and speculation about a potential spot XRP ETF.

In addition, "whales" holding between 1 million and 10 million tokens continue to accumulate, providing support for this rebound. Analysis company reports indicate that since November, these addresses have accumulated 1.4 billion XRP, worth approximately $3.8 billion. Google Trends data also shows that XRP search volume has surpassed that of Bitcoin.

Hot Projects

$sora | AI

Sora Labs is an artificial intelligence organization focused on the Solana ecosystem. It primarily develops the following projects:

1. Zen: An open-source AI dialogue framework built with Go language, designed to simplify and enhance the development of proxy chat systems, featuring mix-and-match capabilities, compatibility with various AI models, personalized chatting, and memory functions.

2. Hana: A Twitter AI agent based on the Zen framework, showcasing the capabilities of Zen.

3. Toolkit: Tools developed with Go and Rust that help manage seamless collaboration with AI models.

4. Solana Toolkit: An extension toolkit that provides specific functions for Solana.

All projects are open source.

Token Economics: DEV has purchased a total of 100 million tokens, of which 99.2 million have been locked until March 12, with 24.75 million tokens being unlocked linearly every two weeks. The next unlocking date is January 29. Additionally, 829.6K tokens have been transferred to the Streamflow contract but have not yet been locked.

The top 100 positions account for 61.95%, with the largest holder accounting for 9.92% being the locked portion, and the average purchase price of the top 100 has doubled.