Sea_Bitcoin

When I surf the Web3 blockchain with my iPhone

OKX @Wallet =
+ Browser 🌍
+ Search Engine 🔍
+ Trading Platform 💱
+ Wallet 💰

Payment giant Stripe has acquired Bridge and Privy in succession, demonstrating a strong determination to enter the cryptocurrency payment space, and its overall landscape is becoming increasingly complete: using Privy to help developers easily manage each user's/merchant's exclusive wallet (acquiring/payment), and then using Bridge as a bridge for seamless conversion between fiat and stablecoins, while remaining compliant.

◦ Stripe is a new giant in the FinTech × SaaS field established in 2010, with a valuation exceeding $90 billion.

◦ The acquisition of @Stablecoin was announced on 2024/10/21 and completed in February this year, with an amount of $1.1 billion.

◦ Bridge's core business is providing stablecoin APIs to help global enterprises achieve seamless conversion between fiat currency and stablecoins, supporting scenarios such as cross-border payments, stablecoin issuance, and custody, making money move. It also holds relevant licenses in 48 states in the U.S. and other countries.

◦ The acquisition amount for @privy_io is likely in the range of $300 million to $500 million, with Privy’s last valuation at $230 million.

◦ Privy's core business is providing wallet APIs, helping over 1,000 developer teams to integrate Web3 wallets into apps with one click, allowing over 75 million users to quickly obtain a Web3 wallet after logging in with their email/phone number without needing to manage private keys/mnemonic phrases, accelerating onboarding for more users onto the chain.

The guess is that the source is the gmgn official Twitter account has issues
Leading to multiple top KOL accounts being implicated together

KOLs supporting or deeply collaborating on a project
Should not easily let their accounts be 'affiliated' with project gold standards
As a KOL, it's important to maintain account independence

Previously, two projects approached me
Although both are projects I like and recognize
I still didn't promote them, it feels a bit off

𝕏 This feature is suitable for executives and support departments
External associations can easily spiral out of control for both parties
It's really not worth it to save a bit on 𝕏 membership fees

The Bitcoin Asia 2025 conference, organized by Bitcoin Magazine, will be held in Hong Kong🇭🇰 from 8/28 to 8/29. There are currently some free 'General Admission' tickets available. If you're interested in attending, you can claim them first 👇

https://tickets.b.tc/event/bitcoin-asia-2025

The biggest boss of the micro-strategy in the cryptocurrency circle, Michael Saylor, recently accepted an interview with CNBC reporters, where he classified Crypto assets into four categories:

◦ Digital Commodities: For example, Bitcoin $BTC is an asset in the form of a commodity, with no issuer; the government needs to clarify that this is neither a security nor a token, nor a collectible or currency.

◦ Digital Currency: For instance, USDC, a dollar stablecoin issued by regulated banks like Circle;

◦ Digital Securities: Stocks like Apple and Tesla, tokenized stocks that can circulate globally 24/7 at lightning speed, or tokenized bonds;

◦ Digital Tokens: Such as tokenized fan clubs, tickets, memberships, etc. These types of tokens can create innovative business models and should have some digital or real-world utility, but should not offer securities or financial utility.

Currently, the industry is in a transitional period, without a market structure bill. If we want the industry to grow 100 times or 1000 times, we need clear legal definitions of the four new asset types (digital commodities, currency, securities, tokens). Before the United States defines commodities, currencies, securities, and tokens, innovations in countries around the world face obstacles.

The popularity of Plasma indicates that the market is not short of money (the supply of stablecoins continues to hit new highs), but rather lacks emotional catalysts and confidence. People are immune to garbage projects and simply do not want to rush in.

To this day, many still feel regret for the collapse of FTX and SBF's imprisonment, even imagining what might have happened if CZ hadn't intervened, which is truly astonishing.

If FTX hadn't encountered issues in 2022, given the company's chaotic management style and erratic behavior, it might have resulted in an even bigger hole later on.

Moreover, if FTX hadn't had problems, how could we have bought $BTC at 16K?

Recently, there has been a general feeling that the liquidity of the Crypto market has been absorbed by the US stock market. Talking with friends at the exchange, he complained that there is a lot of pressure on the second-tier exchanges.

Spot

◦ After the meme coin craze, user habits have formed, and many 'meme coins' that are not listed on CEX can still have good on-chain liquidity.
◦ Binance Alpha is aggressively listing coins, directly impacting the spot lists of second-tier exchanges like Gate, Bitget, and Bybit. Project teams believe that listing on Binance Alpha offers better value for money.

Contracts

◦ Similarly, Hyperliquid has good liquidity, and the fact that it doesn't require KYC has also attracted many hackers and speculative funds.

Since the Sahara AI testnet started in December last year, I have been tracking this project and have written a few articles introducing the basic situation and important progress of the project. Recently, Sahara AI is about to have its TGE, opening up 1.4167% of its share to the community. With a FDV of 600 million, it's actually not cheap (the last round of financing was valued at 400 million USD), but I still decided to participate.

Mainly, I am optimistic about @SaharaLabsAI as a public chain designed for native AI, which has the opportunity to become a leading representative in this new track. Additionally, Sahara AI's data performance during several rounds of the testnet phase has been very good, with high community enthusiasm and positive ecological feedback.

The platform for this TGE is Buidlpad, whose founder also came from Binance and was previously responsible for Binance Launchpad and CoinMarketCap.

There is a detail worth noting: the assets users need to invest are BNB or USD1, rather than stablecoins like USDT or USDC. As we all know, USD1 is a stablecoin issued by the Trump family, and previously, when the Abu Dhabi sovereign fund invested in Binance, there were 2 billion funds based on USD1. Under such a structure and background, it also indicates that the Sahara AI project will likely receive significant support from ecosystems like Binance and BNB Chain in the future.

Looking back at the key milestones and data of Sahara AI over the past six months:

◦ Sahara AI started with high financing from star institutions (https://t.co/4SbqyFDDFA), co-led by Polychain, YZi Labs, and Pantera Capital, quickly becoming a representative of AI public chains.

◦ During the testnet phases S1 and S2, over a hundred thousand users participated in data labeling, with millions of data points, making it highly competitive (https://t.co/ZMWnF36rvb).

◦ The data labeling capabilities are fed back to other AI applications (https://t.co/2uA3mtYm39), with the first collaboration being with MyShell, opening up a new business model.

◦ Before the launch of the SIWA public testnet (https://t.co/VFyuvdgse4), there were over 3.2 million wallet addresses, over 1.4 million daily active wallets, and more than 200,000 users contributed data to DSP.

The Circle shareholder list features many Chinese capital players, including IDG, Baidu Ventures, Yixin, Everbright Holdings, CICC, Bitmain, and Huaxing Capital, most of whom invested between 2016 and 2018. China had a solid foundation in the cryptocurrency space.

I first learned about Circle in 2016 and thought the name was quite nice. A former colleague of mine was a designer at Circle, and they had a small team in Beijing at that time. However, not long after, the Chinese team was disbanded.

OneKey has obtained a new round of financing today. From a user's perspective, the growth of this company is worth learning from.

At first glance, hardware wallets do not seem like a big business. In the context of the Chinese market, selling hardware has always been difficult to achieve high margins.

OneKey's first phase is to solidly develop the hardware wallet itself and win market trust through complete open-source. "Creating a Web3 wallet" is not difficult; the challenge lies in how to gain trust and encourage bold use. Although MetaMask has been stagnant for the past three years with poor product experience, its brand remains top-tier for this reason.

Secondly, regarding user experience, from my usage perspective, OneKey is one of the rare startup teams that can do both hardware and software well. @ohyishi's product aesthetics are very impressive.

In addition, hardware wallets have another significant competitive advantage that software wallets do not possess. Under the premise of security, once users choose a hardware wallet, they are unlikely to switch easily.

For example, in my commonly used EVM hot wallets, I have entered/imported a set of mnemonic phrases/private keys in wallets from at least five different brands. The funds are essentially fluid; we are constantly verifying the fundamental characteristics of Crypto public-private key pairs, making it difficult to have absolute loyalty to software wallets. However, the same cannot happen with hardware wallets; those who have used hardware wallets understand this principle.

Therefore, this is essentially the core barrier of hardware wallets. Unless the hardware fails or in other extreme situations, the user's migration cost is extremely high. The larger the amount of funds, the more cautious users become, and the more they tend to stay put.

OneKey has recognized this point and launched the OneKey Earn product aimed at high-net-worth users. Without requiring users to move their funds, it meets the financial management needs of some individuals, resulting in a 11-fold increase in stored user assets and DeFi scale over three years.

Thus, in the wallet sector, brand and security are the most crucial foundations, and it is more suitable for true long-term thinkers.

In 2022, I asked Yishi if OneKey could be purchased domestically, and he sent me ten OneKey Mini devices. Besides one for personal use, I gave the rest away. This team's operations are also very warm.

Some exchanges transfer USDT through #Tron, which has become more expensive than Ethereum.

Although BNB Chain is free, some exchanges do not support it, such as #OKX.

Overall, among the larger exchanges, the one that supports USDT transfers widely and is the cheapest is Aptos, with fees ranging from 0.00 to 0.03 USDT.

Cryptocurrency Market Status Mid-2025

◦ Launch platforms outnumber developers
◦ Developers outnumber those with money + VCs investing
◦ Trading platforms and trading bots outnumber good assets
◦ Agencies outnumber KOLs
◦ KOLs outnumber retail investors
◦ Advertisements outnumber cognitive sharing
◦ CMOs outnumber product managers
◦ Public chains outnumber quality dApps
◦ Stablecoins outnumber the 26 letters
◦ Earning from Binance Alpha surpasses on-chain project profits

LatePost: But was the purchase of cryptocurrency led by him (Cai Wensheng)?
Wu Xinhong: I don't want to comment on cryptocurrency now because it is already in the past.

LatePost: What was your attitude towards the purchase of cryptocurrency at that time?
Wu Xinhong: Based on the voting of the board of directors at that time, I also voted in favor. I just regarded it as an investment. From the results, it was indeed a good investment return. At the end of last year, we sold all the cryptocurrency we held, making a profit of 570 million yuan, and 80% of the profits were distributed as dividends to shareholders.
However, if I could travel back in time, I would probably prefer to use that money to find good teams that could synergize with our business.

LatePost: This counts as a successful investment, but it seems to have brought you more distress?
Wu Xinhong: Yes. Sometimes, despite significant improvements in performance, when Bitcoin crashes, our stock price immediately drops; but when Bitcoin rises, our stock price doesn't increase.

The first time I saw the name Humanity Protocol, I had a sense of 'what you see is what you get' — the product lives up to its name, and its main positioning is 'real person chain'.

Similar to WorldCoin, which uses iris scanning to determine 'real people', Humanity uses palm print scanning as its identification method; both are Proof of Human practices but do not require KYC, and in comparison, Humanity has a lower threshold. WorldCoin uses UBI as a starting point, providing basic income to real people in the AI era; whereas Humanity Protocol has a broader vision, building an ecosystem world of real person public chains.

In terms of product, since the testnet launched in October last year, @Humanityprot has already amassed over 8 million real users from more than 150 countries, with an average of over 140,000 transactions per day. This provides a solid user data foundation for future listings on leading CEXs, as being able to attract web2 users is an important dimension for CEXs when evaluating project listings. Humanity has the opportunity to replicate last year's airdrop frenzy that brought millions of users to the TON ecosystem.
In terms of financing, Humanity's latest round of valuation in January this year is $1.1 billion. In two rounds, it raised a total of $50 million, with investors including top crypto capitals like Jump Crypto, Pantera, Hashed, Polygon, and Kingsway Capital.
In terms of community, Humanity announced a few days ago that it would allocate 0.2% of its total token supply (valued at approximately $2.2 million based on the latest round) directly to $Kaito stakers and Humanity Yappers, adding a heavyweight project to the 'mouth-to-earn' sector, which also indicates that $H is not far from TGE.
In terms of application scenarios, Humanity combines ZK technology, and with the unique and authentic verification of billions of global users, this data will hold value across many industries and scenarios. The most obvious application is in biometric information correlation, where anti-witchcraft airdrops and welfare distribution scenarios can be used by many project parties, allowing for low-cost filtering of on-chain wallets. More dApp developers can also leverage this universal capability and flexibly integrate it with their own application scenarios.

Overall, Humanity has found a balance between privacy and authenticity, using palm print recognition based on ZK technology as its foundation, and is building a brand new L1 public chain world.

It must be said that the $LOUD distribution mechanism and the initial token distribution method are quite clever, maximizing spread, and the project team @stayloudio is very smart.

Previously, attention farming had a vague and blurry set of rules, where the project team would have KOLs write content to accumulate mindshare. During TGE, the project team would estimate the situation and airdrop some tokens to the KOLs as a gesture.

LOUD does the opposite; it sets a clear price and opening market value (150k-160k FDV), along with a distribution method for fees. It first lets a group of people go crazy on Twitter, maximizing attention, and then distributes tokens based on Kaito's algorithm (the top 1000 LOUD Yappers are locked for a whitelist).

Don't criticize $LOUD just because it's a speculative token; 99.99% of this industry is playing with speculative tokens, so this criticism doesn't hold.

This model will definitely see other projects imitating it. For example, the second and third projects targeting #Kaito users, but perhaps excelling in meme content and IP; or targeting Cookies users to seize the first place on new platforms. In short, there will be many versions of 'micro-innovation' emerging.

Reading recent industry news, it feels like the boundaries between traditional finance and crypto are becoming increasingly blurred, and the trend of integration is accelerating.

1/ Kraken claims it will support trading in over 50 tokenized stocks and ETFs, including Apple, Tesla, and Nvidia in the future. Bybit's gold & forex (MT5) product suite is also making similar attempts.

2/ Futu announced at the beginning of May that it supports deposits in stablecoins like USDT and USDC to purchase Hong Kong and US stocks.

3/ The PLUME team communicated with the SEC's crypto working group and the Treasury in Washington, discussing with policymakers how to realize the tokenization and on-chain integration of markets such as stocks, bonds, loans, and commodities, and how to enhance the liquidity, efficiency, and transparency of RWA under the right regulatory framework.

4/ The US stablecoin bill, the GENIUS Act, has passed procedural voting in the Senate and is expected to undergo a full vote soon before entering the House for review. If passed, it will accelerate the issuance of stablecoins and further consolidate the dollar's global dominance.

The Plume team works steadily and has good government relations; they previously sponsored a dinner for Trump. Plume's mainnet is being launched in phases, with the first phase, Plume Alpha, being a controlled launch (ordinary users do not have access), which went live on May 12.
The goal of this phase is to bring RWA blue-chip assets (such as Superstate, Invesco, Blackstone, Anemoy, etc.) into the flagship protocol Nest, providing institutional-level returns.

The next phase, Plume Genesis, will be fully open to the public, expected to be completed by Q2 2025. By then, users will be able to fully participate in lending, staking, trading, and other functions within the RWAFi ecosystem.

On one side, stablecoins like USDT are being used to buy stocks, and on the other side, traditional assets are being tokenized and brought on-chain, with the forces of these two directions converging ⛓️

Yesterday, another batch of cryptocurrency and stock-related self-media accounts were banned across the internet and featured on CCTV. Some of these people will likely shift to Twitter, which is almost their only choice.

In 2024-2025, many projects had excessively high valuations when issuing tokens, which later led to a decline in their value. This can be attributed to the previous bull market from 2021-2022, where there was too much money in the market, leading to inflated valuations. At the same time, the Web3 narrative is difficult to sustain, and the market's response has a lag of 2-3 years.

The process of the bubble being burst is still ongoing, which is a good thing; some crypto funds are dissolving or transitioning to secondary markets.

I saw a piece of data from April indicating that valuations in the primary market are returning to rational levels.

BTC: 👋 ETH, I'm just over 1000 points away from an all-time high, how about you?

ETH: Brother Coin, I'm also about one or two thousand away, let's meet at the peak! 🤣