CRYPTO ASSET MARKET PROSPECTS ACCORDING TO HUOBI ACADEMY’S STRATEGIC OVERVIEW
Huobi Academy of Blockchain Application is Huobi Pro’s division focused on research around various cryptocurrency topics. I have previously covered Huobi Investor Sentiment Index Report by the Academy in a previous article. This is the first part of a four article discussion on excerpts from the 1H 2018 Global Blockchain Industry Strategic Overview by Huobi, the latest release from the Huobi Academy. Covering all the main talking points of cryptocurrency, this report will first be exclusively revealed to attendees of the Blockchain Festival Vietnam. This article will go over small snippets of the complete document.
Huobi Pro website: www.huobi.pro
HADAX website: https://www.hadax.com/vic
Since inception of Bitcoin back in 2009, there are now over 1500 cryptocurrencies listed on coinmarketcap not to mention those yet to be included. 2017’s monumental change from $17.74 billion to $559.76 billion at the end of the year marked a psychological threshold. So far in 2018, markets are improving after the entire marketcap bottomed at about 70% of the previous high. Similarly, google trends for Bitcoin searches and active Bitcoin addresses coincided with the market increasing towards the end of 2017 and tanking with the graphs this year. The end of the US and Japan tax season is considered the turning point of the upturn of the markets.
Super nodes election
Projects such aas EOS, CMT and TRX stimulated markets further with the launch of their super node elections.
Investor Sentiment Index
Despite the bearish trends for the better part of the year, investors have been bullish on the medium-term and long-term future of cryptocurrencies. According to the Huobi Investor Sentiment Index Report-April, 90% of investors believed the total market value of cryptocurrencies will improve while more than 70% put the figure by at least 30%.
Cryptoassets crowdfunding
Raising funds through cryptocurrencies popularly known as ICOs is one of the main markers of this space. At least 413 out of 913 ICOs were successful in achieving their soft cap targets, raising over $5.6 billion, $0.24 billion more than the previous year. Outstanding figures include $0.257 billion by Filecoin, $0.232 billion by Tezos and Polkadot raising $0.145 billion.
There was remarkable appreciation in value by some cryptocurrencies. Spectrecoin led the pack with the price changing by as much as 741. 42x. Other projects include Neblio(84.83x), Qtum(73.71x), Icon(43.30x) and Tron(42.80x).
Despite the amount raised by token sales depreciating on a monthly basis, the total capital exceeded 2017 on an entire year basis. Telegram ICO raising $0.85 billion leads 2018 outstanding token sales. Not to forget, EOS is still raising capital, reaching about $3.3 billion by end of April.
Listings, Regulations, Liquidity shrinkage
Exchange listings are highly anticipated milestones for new projects. Statistics for January to April successful exchange listings stand at 35.62%, 16.89%, 2.23% and 30.49% in that order. Tightened restrictions by global regulatory authorities such as the US SEC played a huge role. Some projects delayed listing to see out the bear market.
Since listing some projects valuation dropped sharply, but the big projects have outperformed the entire market. Percentages of price reduction below token issuance price by month, stand at 21.05%, 42.86%, 66.67% and 42% from January to April. The top perfoming projects during this period are Zilliqa(33.02x), Tomochain(6.46x), Bluzelle(5.58x), Gifto(4.94x) and Nucleus Vision(4.7x).
First successful DAICO, The Abyss
Proposed by Vitalik Buterin, the DAICO is a new crowdfunding entrepreneurs access only a portion of funds raised, with the rest unlocked by smart contracts when the team hits certain predetermined milestones. Important to note is that investors can also vote to terminate the projects and receive their invested funds.
The first successful DAICO, the Abyss, raised 17,057 ETH and 141,183 BNB, roughly about $ 14.38 million.
Difference between last bull market and previous two
Bitcoin bull run in 2013 was directly related with block rewards cut in half in 2012, and the 2017 bull market was also a result of such change. The 2017 bull run was also huge due to massive improvements by alts utilizing smart contracts technology, a majority of which were launched on top of Ethereum (ERC-20 tokens). Bitcoin dominance shrinked from 87.32% to 40.99%. Bitcoin marketcap increased by 13x compared to Ethereum’s 96x.
How will the cryptomarket evolve?
Six important points to look out for:
1. Crypto finance penetrating traditional finance due to its advantages such as anonymity, borderlessness and programmability
2. Dapps with “Use cases + Blockchain”
Implementing blockchain technology on top of existing use-cases for optimization, and not the other way round, will see greater value addition and hence sustainability
3. M&A: Blockchain acquiring Internet
Mergers & acquisitions in the blockchain space as quality internet Dapps are created.
4. Rise of blockchain user base
Tracked by number of wallet registrations for example
5. From younger generation to the masses
Crypto adoption to increase from the young generation(25–34) who form the majority currently to other age groups
6. Gender: From male to female
More females entering blockchain could steady growth direction due to their nature for longer-term growth and new directions for dApps(perhaps due to higher spending incentives).
The medium and long term future of cryptocurrencies show a leaning towards more “invest + application” paradigm. Also, reduced role of transactions between tokens and fiat currencies will contribute to the overall growth of the space.
Don’t forget you can get the complete the complete report and many more information by attending the Blockchain Festival Vietnam. You can get a handsome discount of 50% by writing the code WRITE50 when you buy tickets from the website here www.blockchainfestival.com
