OKX Ventures partner Jeff attended the 2024 Hong Kong Web3 Carnival sponsored by OKX Web3 and delivered a keynote speech titled “Exploring the Future of the Bitcoin Ecosystem” at the main venue. The forum, themed around Bitcoin, was jointly organized by Wanchain Blockchain Laboratory, HashKey Group, and Nervos CKB.
Jeff first shared the development of the Bitcoin ecosystem. He stated that in the past two years, the cryptocurrency market has been continuously growing, and the OKX Ventures team has always been optimistic about its underlying value proposition and resilience. In terms of trading volume, the current upward cycle started in September 2023. As of March 2024, the monthly total trading volume has exceeded 7 trillion US dollars.
Furthermore, comparing the 2022 data released by the World Bank, the total trading volume of US stocks was 43.22 trillion US dollars, and the trading volume of cryptocurrencies has reached the same level. From the perspective of investment and financing in the crypto market, after the frenzy in 2021 and 2022, the total investment amount in 2023 dropped to around 10 billion US dollars. The investment mainly focuses on infrastructure, gaming, DeFi, and other areas. The total investment and financing amount in the first quarter of 2024 exceeded 2.6 billion US dollars, which is currently in a moderate state compared to historical data.
Of course, it is worth noting that the UTXO, SegWit, Taproot upgrade, as well as protocols like Ordinals and Atomicals based on Bitcoin, have built the underlying infrastructure for the issuance of assets such as BTC’s NFTs and tokens. As of April 1, 2024, according to data from OKLink, Dune, and brc-20.io, the total amount of inscriptions is 64,066,164.
When discussing the development of the Bitcoin ecosystem, Jeff believes that due to the fact that Bitcoin itself does not have Turing completeness and does not support smart contracts, which limits the development of more complex business ecosystems, Bitcoin Layer2 has emerged. The development of these protocols aims to provide scalability to the Bitcoin network by processing transactions outside the Bitcoin main chain, thereby improving the overall performance of Bitcoin.
Of course, in addition to the progress in the ecosystem, the listing of BTC spot ETF this year is also a milestone event in the industry. At the beginning of the year, the US SEC finally approved the listing of Bitcoin spot ETFs. As of April 1, the average daily net inflow of funds into Bitcoin spot ETFs was 219 million US dollars, and the average daily trading volume has reached 33.7 billion US dollars.
Speaking of this year, BTC halving is another major event in the industry. This halving is influenced by various factors, especially the growth of inscriptions and the listing of spot ETFs. The emergence of Bitcoin inscriptions has injected new vitality into on-chain activities, and the continued growth of on-chain activities benefits from the renewed attention of developers and innovations in the Bitcoin blockchain. At the same time, the widespread adoption of Bitcoin ETFs may absorb selling pressure, reshape the market structure, and provide new stable demand sources for BTC prices. These factors have collectively had a certain impact on BTC prices.
In addition to the dynamics related to Bitcoin itself, the combination of AI and crypto has also been a focus of attention in the industry recently. Currently, we can see several possible points of integration from the perspective of technological development:
– The decentralized and permanent storage features of blockchain provide solid integrity support for AI data and models.
– The introduction of token economy will effectively support incentives and payment mechanisms for AI in terms of data, models, and computing resources.
– With the continuous development of blockchain technology and the improvement of computing power, it is expected to deploy AI models on-chain in the future, promoting the deep integration of blockchain and artificial intelligence, bringing unprecedented changes and innovative opportunities to various industries.
When discussing the investment layout of OKX Ventures, Jeff admitted that in the face of challenges and a market based on the crypto industry, OKX Ventures has always actively embraced industry construction and is committed to contributing its own modest efforts. In 2023, OKX Ventures’ total external investment exceeded 50 million US dollars, covering multiple areas including the Bitcoin ecosystem, with a focus on infrastructure.
“OKX Ventures actively invests in and supports innovative projects within the BTC ecosystem, providing not only financial support but also additional resources to promote success. For example, we have jointly organized the Bitcoin Ecosystem Project Winter Roadshow with other industry partners, actively guiding and motivating more developers to participate in the Bitcoin ecosystem. In the future, OKX Ventures also looks forward to actively cooperating with more quality project parties, providing deep support to provide users with high-quality services and contribute to the industry,” concluded Jeff.
OKX Ventures