The on-chain boom rises, can exchange tokens welcome a spring?

Recently, the cryptocurrency market has experienced significant changes, with Bitcoin's market share dropping from 60% to 55%, marking the arrival of altcoin season. Market hotspots are blooming in various aspects: AI-themed projects are leading the trend, with a certain virtual protocol's market capitalization once surpassing $300 million; an AI project in a public chain ecosystem also broke through $1 billion in market capitalization. Another exchange's ecological coin has seen an increase of more than 10 times. In terms of products, the open interest on the exchange has repeatedly hit new highs, surpassing $4.3 billion. Even the NFT sector, which had been neglected by the market, has seen some action, with several well-known NFT projects issuing tokens one after another, driving up the prices of various blue-chip NFT projects on Ethereum and a certain public chain.

Looking at the hotspots across various sectors, it is not difficult to find that the heat is mainly concentrated 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 round of bull market that cannot be ignored: Trump may be elected again. This means that cryptocurrencies will further enter the public eye. The improvement of regulations and the relaxation of supervision are expected to promote external capital into the cryptocurrency field. The continuous net inflow of funds into Bitcoin and Ethereum spot ETFs is evidence of this. The Trump family's cryptocurrency project has also purchased a large amount of DeFi-related coins within a month, including ETH, CBBTC, AAVE, LINK, ENA, and ONDO.

Let’s take a look at how these tokens perform after being purchased, what common characteristics they have, and which concept coins are worth paying attention to.

Purchase Record Overview

Starting from November 30, the Trump family's cryptocurrency project has invested a total of 44.75 million dollars in purchasing various cryptocurrencies. As of December 18, all the coins they hold are in a profitable state.

Interestingly, compared to traditional institutions, this project holds significantly more Ethereum than Bitcoin, which may indicate that they are more optimistic about Ethereum's future price trends.

AAVE, as the leader in lending across the entire market, holds the first place in TVL among all protocols, with a deposit scale approaching 40 billion USD, setting a new historical high. Its coin price has increased by 35% in seven days. In addition, the Trump family project community has passed a proposal to cooperate with AAVE, which is currently under temporary review at AaveDAO. If the proposal is approved, it will bring new users and more actual benefits to AAVE.

LINK is a well-known oracle project. On November 14, the Trump family project announced that it will use Chainlink as the standard for on-chain data and cross-chain connectivity to safely promote the mass adoption of DeFi.

The development of ENA is closely related to the current bull market. As its stablecoin's yield comes from arbitrage between spot and futures, the more positive the market sentiment, the higher the Ethereum funding rate, and the more ENA can benefit. Recently, its TVL surpassed 6 billion USD, reaching a historical high. In terms of products, they have also partnered with an asset management company to launch an RWA stablecoin based on government bond yields, which has alleviated concerns about the protocol falling into a death spiral due to the possibility of funding rates turning negative.

ONDO is currently the leader in the RWA sector. After a certain asset management company announced the launch of a cryptocurrency fund, ONDO invested more than $95 million, becoming the largest holder. Whether it is compliance, legitimacy, fund size, or market recognition, ONDO is the best choice in the current RWA sector.

It is worth mentioning COW. The Trump family project used a certain protocol for trading when purchasing the above coins, so COW is also regarded as a related concept coin.

Possible Future Investment Directions

Based on the investment strategy of the Trump family project, we can speculate on the targets they may focus on in the future.

First, they tend to favor tokens that have cooperative relationships, such as AAVE and LINK. Secondly, they value a "clear business model" and "stable real returns." Projects like AAVE, LINK, ENA, and ONDO have clear product positioning, a large ecosystem of users, and actual revenue models. This indicates that they will not blindly pursue "novelty" or "pure concept" tokens, but are more inclined to invest in protocols that can bring long-term value.

LDO: Given that the Trump family's holdings in ETH far exceed those in BTC, it is evident that they have a strong outlook on Ethereum's long-term potential. With the maturation of Ethereum's staking mechanism, coupled with the possibility of ETFs introducing Ethereum staking rates, a certain liquid staking protocol, currently the leader, may become the preferred choice. This protocol is the largest liquid staking protocol in the Ethereum ecosystem, with a TVL of 37 billion USD, accounting for 30% of the entire Ethereum staking market.

Pendle: Primarily focused on the yield splitting market, allowing users to trade future yield rights. As Ethereum staking rates and yields from certain protocols rise, the demand for yield trading markets continues to increase, making Pendle highly regarded in this bull market. Recently, Pendle's TVL has surpassed $5 billion and has established partnerships with several mainstream DeFi protocols.

UNI: A certain decentralized exchange is the pioneer of DeFi Summer and is currently the most frequently used decentralized exchange by users, leading the sector. Recently, they also launched a new technical solution, although the market response has been tepid, it does not affect users' reliance on their products.

Summary: Blue-chip projects become the focus

Regarding the Trump family's large-scale purchase of cryptocurrencies, an analyst from a data analysis platform told the media: "This may be to gain more trust, or to promote the development of its own projects by drawing attention to these assets. Because if these assets perform well, the Trump family project could also benefit from it."

The Trump family's projects are actively laying out blue-chip projects, which not only boosts the market's confidence in mainstream DeFi protocols but also injects more institutional funds into the crypto market. Such capital flow further stabilizes the market and drives mainstream projects towards higher market capitalization and development potential.