On April 9, OKX Ventures partner Jeff attended the 2024 Hong Kong Web3 Carnival sponsored by OKX Web3 and delivered a keynote speech on Exploring the Future of Bitcoin Ecology at the main venue. This forum has the theme of Bitcoin and is co-organized by Wanxiang Blockchain Lab, HashKey Group and Nervos CKB.
Jeff first shared the development of the Bitcoin ecosystem. He said that in the past two years, the cryptocurrency market has continued to develop, and the OKX Ventures team has always been optimistic about its underlying value attributes and development resilience. Judging from the trading volume, this rising cycle began in September 2023. As ofIn March 2024, its total monthly transactions had exceeded $7 trillion.
Moreover, comparing the 2022 data released by the World Bank: the total trading volume of U.S. stocks is 43.22 trillion U.S. dollars, and the cryptocurrency trading volume is at the same level. Secondly, from the perspective of investment and financing in the crypto market, after experiencing the madness in 2021 and 2022, the total market investment in 2023 will fall back to about US$10 billion. The investment areas mainly focus on infrastructure, games, DeFi and other fields.The total investment and financing in the first quarter of 2024 exceeded US$2.6 billion. Compared with historical data, it is currently in a moderate state.
Of course, what deserves more attention is that technologies such as Bitcoin-based UTXO, SegWit and Taproot upgrades, as well as protocols such as Ordinals and Atomics, have built the underlying infrastructure for the issuance of BTCs NFTs, Tokens and other assets. As of April 1, 2024, according to data statistics from OKLink, Dune and brc-20.io:The total number of inscriptions is 64, 066, 164.
When talking about the ecological development of Bitcoin, Jeff believes that in the context that Bitcoin itself does not have the characteristics of Turing completeness and does not support smart contracts, it limits the development of Bitcoin’s more complex ecological business.BitcoinLayer 2Born out of necessity, these protocols were developed to provide scalability to the Bitcoin network by processing transactions outside of the Bitcoin main chain, thereby improving Bitcoin’s overall performance.
Of course, in addition to ecological progress, this year’s listing of BTC spot ETF is a milestone event in the industry.At the beginning of the year, the US SEC finally approved the listing of Bitcoin spot ETF. Bitcoin spot ETFs as of April 1The average daily net inflow of funds is US$219 million, and the average daily trading volume has been US$3.37 billion.
For this year, the BTC halving is another major event at the industry level. This halving was affected by new developments in the Bitcoin ecosystem in many ways, especially the growth of Inscription and the listing of spot ETFs. The emergence of Bitcoin Inscription has injected new vitality into on-chain activity, and the continued growth of on-chain activity is due to renewed attention from developers and innovation in the Bitcoin blockchain. At the same time, widespread adoption of Bitcoin ETFs may absorb selling pressure, reshape the market structure, and provide a new source of stable demand for BTC prices. Together, these factors have a certain impact on BTC prices.
In addition to developments related to Bitcoin itself,The combination of AI and CryptoIt is also the focus of attention in the industry recently. At present, we see that there may be the following combination points from the perspective of technical development:
Through the decentralization and permanent storage characteristics of the blockchain, it provides solid integrity support for AI data and models.
The introduction of the Token economy will more effectively support AI’s incentive and payment mechanisms in terms of data, models and computing resources.
With the continuous development of blockchain technology and the improvement of computing power, it is expected that AI models can be deployed on the chain in the future, promoting the deep integration of blockchain and artificial intelligence, and bringing unprecedented changes and innovation opportunities to various industries.
When talking about the investment layout of OKX Ventures, Jeff said frankly that in the face of the challenging and based encryption market, OKX Ventures has always actively embraced industry construction and insisted on contributing its own meager strength. In 2023, OKX Ventures total external investment will exceed US$50 million, covering multiple fields including the Bitcoin ecosystem, with the core area focusing on infrastructure construction.
OKX Ventures actively invests and supports innovative projects within the BTC ecosystem, not only providing financial support, but also providing additional resources to promote success. For example, we have co-organized the winter roadshow of Bitcoin ecological projects with other industry partners to actively guide and inspire more Developers are involved in the Bitcoin ecosystem. In the future, OKX Ventures also looks forward to actively cooperating with more high-quality project parties, providing in-depth support, providing users with high-quality services, and contributing to the industry. Jeff concluded.
About OKX Ventures
As the investment arm of OKX, OKX Ventures focuses on exploring and investing in innovative projects in blockchain technology and the digital currency ecosystem. We are committed to promoting the healthy development of the industry through investment support and looking for emerging technologies and business models that can drive the digital economy forward.
