How is the outlook for exchange coins amid the on-chain token craze?

Recently, the cryptocurrency market has shown a flourishing trend, with Bitcoin's market share dropping from 60% to 55%, indicating the arrival of altcoin trends. Market hotspots are emerging one after another, covering multiple fields:

AI Agent-related projects, such as a certain protocol, once saw its market value exceed $300 million, while an AI project in a certain ecosystem reached a peak market value of $1 billion. A certain ecological coin surged over tenfold, and the exchange's open interest also hit a new high of $4.3 billion. Even the NFT sector, which was once neglected by the market, has been revitalized, with multiple projects issuing tokens, driving the prices of several blue-chip NFT projects upward.

Looking at these hotspots, it is not difficult to find that they are mostly concentrated on-chain projects. So, have the tokens of centralized exchanges really been forgotten by the market?

The reality is not so. There is another narrative in this bull market that cannot be ignored: Trump may be elected. This means that cryptocurrency will further enter the public eye. The improvement of regulations and the easing of supervision are both conducive to external capital flowing into the crypto space. The continuous net inflow of funds into Bitcoin and Ethereum spot ETFs is a testament to this.

A financial project related to the Trump family has also made significant purchases of DeFi-related tokens over the past month, including ETH, CBBTC, AAVE, LINK, ENA, and ONDO. How have these tokens performed since their purchase? What common characteristics do they share? Are there any other related concept coins worth paying attention to? Let's analyze this together.

Purchase Record Overview

Starting from November 30, a certain financial project spent a total of 44.75 million dollars to purchase various cryptocurrencies. As of December 18, all the coins held are in a profitable state.

Interestingly, unlike traditional institutions that prefer Bitcoin, the amount of ETH held by this project far exceeds that of Bitcoin, which may indicate their more optimistic outlook on the future prospects of Ethereum.

AAVE, as the leader in the lending market, ranks first in TVL with a deposit scale close to 40 billion USD, reaching a historical high. Its coin price has increased by 35% in the past seven days. The financial project has also proposed a collaboration with AAVE through community voting, which is currently under preliminary review by AaveDAO.

LINK is a well-known oracle project. On November 14, the financial project announced that it will adopt this technology as the standard for on-chain data and cross-chain connectivity to drive the large-scale adoption of DeFi into the next stage.

The development of ENA is closely related to the current bull market. Since its revenue comes from arbitrage between futures and spot markets, the more optimistic the market sentiment, the higher the Ethereum funding rate, and the more ENA can benefit from it. Its TVL recently surpassed 6 billion USD, reaching an all-time high. They have also partnered with a major asset management firm to launch an RWA stablecoin based on treasury yields, which has alleviated concerns about the protocol falling into a death spiral due to a potential negative funding rate.

ONDO is currently the leader in the RWA sector. After a major asset management giant announced the launch of related funds, ONDO invested over $95 million, becoming the largest holder. In terms of compliance, legitimacy, capital scale, and market recognition, ONDO is the best choice in the RWA sector.

It is worth mentioning COW. This financial project only used a certain protocol for trading when purchasing the above coins, so COW is also considered a related concept coin.

Coins to Pay Attention to in the Future

Based on the investment logic of this financial project, we can infer the targets they may focus on next.

The first choice is tokens that have a cooperative relationship with the project. Secondly, projects with a "clear business model" and "stable actual returns" are preferred. AAVE, LINK, ENA, ONDO, etc. all have clear product positioning, a large ecological user base, and actual revenue models. This indicates that they are more inclined to invest in protocols that can bring long-term value, rather than chasing "novelty" or "pure concept" tokens.

LDO: Given that the project's holdings of ETH are far higher than those of BTC, it is clear that they are very optimistic about the long-term potential of Ethereum. With the maturation of Ethereum's staking mechanism, along with the possibility of ETFs introducing Ethereum staking rates, a leading protocol has become the preferred choice. It is the largest liquid staking protocol in the Ethereum ecosystem, with a TVL of $37 billion, 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 the yield rates of certain protocols rise, the demand for yield trading markets continues to increase, making Pendle a focal point in this bull market. Recently, Pendle's TVL has surpassed $5 billion and has established partnerships with multiple mainstream DeFi protocols.

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

Summary: The New Positioning of Blue Chip Projects

Regarding the financial project’s large-scale purchase of cryptocurrencies, an analyst from a certain analytics platform stated to the media: "This may be to gain more trust, or to promote the development of its own project by attracting attention to these assets. Because if these assets perform well, the project may also benefit from it."

This financial project actively invests in blue-chip projects, which not only boosts market confidence in mainstream DeFi protocols but also injects more institutional funds into the crypto market. Such capital flow further stabilizes the market and propels mainstream projects toward higher market value and development potential.