Daily News | HK Approved ETH and BTC Spot ETFs; The Bottom Price of "Bored Ape" NFT Fell Below a New Low; GameFi Illuvium Will Launch $25M Token Airdrops

Crypto Daily Digest: HK’s latest approved ETH and BTC spot ETFs; The bottom price of “Bored Ape” NFT has fallen below a new low since 2021; GameFi Illuvium will launch $25 million token airdrops

First, let’s examine the trading activities of Bitcoin ETFs. According to Farside Investor data, Grayscale’s GBTC fund outflow on April 15 was $110.1 million; The continuous outflow of Bitcoin spot ETF funds in recent days is to some extent a cautious response from the market.

In the past three months, the cumulative net inflow of Bitcoin spot ETFs in the United States has exceeded $12.5 billion, and the total net asset value has exceeded $58 billion. Now, the market’s attention is also on the trend of Ethereum spot ETFs.

Hong Kong has become the latest region to approve BTC ETF spot ETFs. Jiashi International, Boshi Fund, and Huaxia Fund (Hong Kong) have successively announced that they have been approved by the Hong Kong Securities Regulatory Commission to provide virtual asset management services to investors and plan to issue ETF products that can invest in BTC spot and ETH spot.

Although the size of the Hong Kong ETF market is relatively small, investors still hold a positive attitude towards the approval of Hong Kong Bitcoin spot ETFs and Ethereum spot ETFs, attracting a large number of buyers to join. ETH is currently trading at $3,086.99, which is likely to recover after several consecutive days of pullbacks.

Compared to the booming overall eco of the crypto market recently, the NFT market appears quite desolate, as evidenced by the Bored Ape Yacht Club series NFTs released three years ago, which have been promoted by many celebrities. Although the entire NFT market has been sluggish for a considerable period of time, BAYC often performs strongly. It is considered one of the most successful stories in the market, with an active community and a popular iteration series.

Based on historical data, according to CryptoSlam, BAYC is the top ranked NFT series in the collectible market in terms of sales, with sales exceeding $3 billion.

As of Monday, the lowest price of Bored Ape NFT has dropped to 10.9 ETHs (approximately $34,000). According to data from the NFT data website, since hitting 9.5 ETHs in early August 2021, the bottom price of the NFT has never dropped to such a low level.

BAYC acquired by some celebrities was later sold for a small portion of the original price. According to NFT Price Floor data, the current floor price is more than 90% lower than BAYC’s historical high of 128 ETHs (currently around $395,000) reached in April 2022. Yuga Labs, founder of the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) series, declined to comment on this.

Illuvium announced the launch of a token airdrop campaign, offering a total of 250,000 ILV tokens, equivalent to approximately $25 million. Among them, 50,000 ILVs will be used for loyalty airdrops, and the remaining 200,000 ILVs will be distributed during the 6-month Play-to-Airdrop activity.

The activity requires users to actively participate and interact in Illuvium’s games, including arena battles, virtual world exploration, land development, NFT collection and trading, etc. The activity points will determine the number of airdropped ILVs. The first batch of 20,000 ILVs will be distributed during the Beta test phase, and the remaining 180,000 ILVs will be airdropped gradually within 5 months after the official launch of the Beta mainnet.

Loyalty airdrops will reward users who have actively participated in the Illuvium eco over the past three years, including staking ILV tokens, providing LP liquidity, purchasing virtual land, trading NFTs, etc., and are planned to be distributed in Q2 2024. Illuvium took a snapshot on April 14th.

Illuvium is an open world RPG 3A level game built on Ethereum’s L2 ImmutableX. The studio aims to build the world’s first interoperable blockchain game (IBG) universe, including open world exploration games, industrial city building games, and automatic combat games, all of which are played on the Ethereum blockchain. The private beta 4 (PB4) will begin on April 30, and the public beta testnet will begin on May 28.

Market Trends: The market is falling, with BTC halving in less than 5 days

The market continued to decline after a brief rebound yesterday, less than 5 days after Bitcoin halving. Regarding macroeconomics, the US stock market has experienced a sharp decline. The retail data in March exceeded expectations, and the market’s expectation for the first rate cut by the Federal Reserve was greatly delayed.

Market Hotspots:

Fan coin sector: Tokens in fan coin sectors such as JUV, CITY, BAR, and PSG have risen. The European Cup football match is about to start, and the market is hyping up related concept tokens, which have attracted the attention and pursuit of investors.

Hong Kong concept tokens: ACH, PHB, and other Hong Kong concept tokens have risen, benefiting from news that Hong Kong is about to adopt Bitcoin and Ethereum spot ETFs.

According to Bloomberg, the inflow of Bitcoin spot ETFs in Hong Kong is expected to reach $500 million, which is also driving the performance of Hong Kong concept tokens.

The performance of other anti-falling coins: In a falling market, TON performs relatively well, while other similar coins include ONDO and PENDLE. TON has been a popular token recently, and Telegram’s IPO news greatly enhances its fundamentals. As a leading token in the RWA sector, ONDO’s price performance is also relatively strong. PENDLE’s total value locked (TVL) continues to grow, currently approaching $4.5 billion, with a more than 7-fold increase since the beginning of this year.

In summary, the market continues to decline, but some specific sectors and tokens still perform strongly. Investors should closely monitor market trends and adjust their investment strategies accordingly.

Macro: The escalating tense political situation suppresses risk appetite, global stock markets remain cautious, and gold and oil prices rise

The US stock market closed sharply lower on Monday, mainly because the market was worried about the intensification of tensions between Iran and Israel, while the yield of US treasury bond bonds rose sharply, dampening market sentiment.

Although the strong retail sales report in the early session had boosted the market sentiment, the subsequent sharp rise in the yield of US treasury bond bonds and the growing geopolitical tensions between Iran and Israel triggered market concerns.

Regarding the three major indices, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.65%, the S&P 500 index fell 1.2%, and the Nasdaq index fell 1.79%. The stock market has recently performed weakly, with the S&P 500 index falling for two consecutive weeks, marking the largest weekly percentage decline since October last year. This is mainly due to investors delaying their expectations for the timing and scale of the Federal Reserve’s interest rate cuts.

The report released last week emphasized that inflation remains higher than market expectations, leading to a significant reduction in interest rate cuts this year. At present, traders expect a rate cut of 45 basis points this year, far below the expected 160 basis points at the beginning of the year. According to data from the FedWatch tool of the Chishang Exchange, the market currently expects interest rate cuts to begin in September instead of June.

Asian stock markets also experienced a decline on Tuesday, with the US dollar climbing to a high of over five months. This is mainly due to stronger than expected retail sales in the United States in March, further strengthening market expectations that the Federal Reserve is not in a hurry to take action. At the same time, the Chinese economy grew by 5.3% year-on-year in the first quarter, exceeding analysts’ expectations.

The yield of 10-year treasury bond bonds in Asia was 4.610%, which soared to a five month high of 4.663% on Monday. The rise in this yield has driven the US dollar higher and kept the Japanese yen near the 34 year low it hit in the past few days.

Japanese Finance Minister Junichi Suzuki stated on Tuesday that he is closely monitoring the exchange rate trend after the US dollar surged to a new high in 34 years and will provide “thorough countermeasures” as needed.

Regarding commodities, the continued intensification of geopolitical tensions in the Middle East has suppressed investors’ risk appetite and boosted gold and oil prices.

US crude oil rose 0.76% to $86.06 per barrel, while Brent crude oil rose 0.69% to $90.72.

The latest price of spot gold is $2,381.50 per ounce.