Review of this week | Bitcoin completed its fourth halving; Runes launched Fomo, and Bitcoin network transaction fees soared

BlockBeats will organize the key industry news content of the week (4.15-4.21) in this article, and recommend in-depth articles to help readers better understand the market and learn about industry trends.

Review of important news this week

Bitcoin successfully completed the fourth halving, and the mining reward was halved from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC

At 8:09 on April 20, Bitcoin successfully completed the fourth halving at block height 840,000. The mining reward of the Bitcoin network was halved from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC. The last halving occurred on May 11, 2020. Related reading: Just now! Bitcoin completed its historic fourth halving! 》 《This may be the most expensive halving of Bitcoin in history》

Bitcoin fluctuated repeatedly this week, and altcoins fell accordingly

This week, due to the impact of geopolitical conflicts and the Fed's wavering expectations of interest rate cuts, the entire crypto market has been in a low-level oscillation. Bitcoin once fell below 60,000 USDT, and Ethereum also fell below 2,900 USDT during the same period. At the same time, altcoins followed the market's general decline, with multiple mainstream currencies falling by more than 20% in 24 hours, and some currencies falling by more than 30%.

On April 16, 10x Research said on its social platform that risky assets represented by stocks and cryptocurrencies are on the verge of a major price adjustment. The main cause is unexpected and persistent inflation. The bond market currently expects less than three rate cuts, with the 10-year Treasury yield exceeding 4.50%. The market may have reached a critical tipping point for risky assets. Bitcoin prices rebounded above $65,000 over the weekend, but altcoins as a whole are still down sharply from last week's highs. Related reading: "Under geopolitical conflict, the crypto market welcomes the "halving" with a big drop?" "BTC fell below $60,000, and institutional investors "stopped"? 》

Runes goes live, Bitcoin network transaction fees soar to 2227 Sat/byte

The Runes protocol is a protocol for issuing homogeneous tokens on the Bitcoin network, which was recently deployed by Casey, the founder of Ordinals. It allows Bitcoin transactions to etch, mint and transfer Bitcoin-native digital goods. It was launched on April 20. After the launch, the Bitcoin network transaction fee soared to 2227 Sat/byte. It fell back today and is now reported at 162 Sat/byte. Related reading: "Runes has not been launched yet, but the ecosystem has become a red ocean" "A new token standard on Bitcoin, one article to understand how the Runes protocol works"

Decentralized betting platform ZKasino arbitrarily changed the official website staking activity instructions, refused to refund, and closed the official community’s speaking rights

On April 19, multiple community users discovered that after the ZKasino staking activity ended, the team was reluctant to open ETH refunds. Through Wayback Machine tracing back, ZKasino deleted the sentence "Ethereum will be returned and can be bridged back" in the Bridge funds of its bridge interface on April 18. Users who participated in the staking activity flocked to the community to question, and then the team members closed the Telegram speaking rights, which aroused rug suspicion.

On April 20, MEXC issued an announcement that the launch and withdrawal of ZKasino (ZKAS) would be postponed, and ZKAS recharge would be temporarily suspended. MEXC said it would notify ZKAS of a new schedule for restarting recharge, withdrawal and launch. It is reported that MEXC originally planned to launch ZKasino (ZKAS) at 18:00 on April 20. It is worth noting that MEXC was one of the investors in ZKasino's undisclosed Series A financing in March. In the face of doubts, ZKasino said on April 20 that there are many FUD rumors. The ZKasino network will continue to go online, but it has been delayed due to the exchange listing.

As of press time, according to on-chain analyst Yu Jin’s monitoring, 8 hours ago, ZKasino transferred 10,515 ETH that users had bridged into ZKasino to a multi-signature address, and then deposited it into Lido. These ETH were bridged into ZKasino for mining, but the ZKasino project team modified the official website description and forcibly replaced the ETH deposited by users with its platform code.

On March 16, Kedar, the founder of ZigZag, a DEX project in Ethereum Layer 2 ecosystem, posted on social media using an official account that most of the revenue of the decentralized betting platform ZKasino was fake, and users were asked to participate in their ICO activities with caution. On March 19, ZKasino announced the completion of its Series A financing with a valuation of US$350 million. The specific amount has not been disclosed. This round of financing was participated by MEXC, Big Brain Holdings, Trading_axe, Pentoshi and Sisyphus.

Token2049 Dubai opened, and heavy rains forced the cancellation of many activities

Token2049 Dubai opened on April 18. Heavy rains forced the cancellation of many activities due to severe waterlogging. Most flights were forced to land in nearby cities. Many surrounding activities were forced to be cancelled or postponed. Related reading: 《Dubai flooded into the sea, this group of people entered "survival mode" as soon as they landed》

Omni is open for airdrops and has been listed on Binance and Coinbase on April 17

On April 17, Ethereum interoperability protocol Omni Network has opened airdrops and pledges. Binance has launched OMNI and OMNI U perpetual contracts that evening. OMNI opened at $55.5 and then fell back. This week, with the decline of Bitcoin, new and new coins have seen a general decline, and OMNI has fallen by more than 50% from its listing high. Related reading: 《Listing at the high point, OMNI missed the best time to list? 》

This week, Ethereum network activity decreased, and Gas fees once dropped to single digits

On April 19, according to Etherscan data, due to the decrease in Ethereum network activity this week and the lack of user interaction, Ethereum network Gas fees dropped to single digits several times, with the lowest reaching 7 gwei.

Merlin Chain opens airdrop query page and goes online on OKX and Bitget

On April 17, Merlin Chain opened the airdrop query page corresponding to Merlin's Seal points. At 18:00 on April 19, OKX and Bitget launched Merlin Chain (MERL) spot trading, which opened at $2 and then fell back.

Binance launches new token issuance platform Megadrop, the first project is BounceBit (BB)

On April 18, according to the official announcement, Binance launched a new token issuance platform Megadrop. Users can apply for BNB regular products on the Binance Megadrop platform, or complete the project's tasks in the Binance Web3 wallet, and directly interact with selected project parties to obtain airdrop rewards. The first project to be launched on Binance Megadrop is BounceBit (BB), a BTC re-staking public chain. The maximum supply of BB is 2.1 billion, the initial circulation is 409.5 million (accounting for 19.5% of the maximum supply of tokens), and the Binance Megadrop quota is 168 million (8% of the maximum supply of tokens).

On April 17, BounceBit officially posted on social media that it will automatically claim all unclaimed BounceBit points and cards and deposit them into the accounts of early access users, but Boost and Swift cards still need to be claimed manually. In addition, BounceBit will take a snapshot of all early access BounceBit Points Paradise at 00:00 UTC on April 20 (8:00 Beijing time). Related reading: 《Killing multiple birds with one stone, retail investor friendly, analyzing the advantages of Binance's Megadrop》

The Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission has approved spot Bitcoin ETF and Ethereum ETF

On April 15, the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission approved at least three fund companies, including China Asset Management and Harvest Global Asset Management Co., Ltd., to cooperate with licensed trading platforms to provide virtual asset management services to investors. They now plan to issue ETF products that can invest in Bitcoin spot and Ethereum spot. The Hong Kong Bitcoin spot ETF will be launched as early as the end of this month. By then, Hong Kong citizens can directly use their securities accounts to purchase spot BTC and ETH without opening an account on the trading platform. A Bloomberg ETF analyst said that the inflow scale of Hong Kong Bitcoin and Ethereum spot ETFs may be US$500 million. Related reading: "What does the approval of Hong Kong BTC and ETH spot ETF mean to the industry?"

io.net announces IO token economic model: initial supply of 500 million, community eventually allocated 50%

On April 16, Solana Ecosystem DePIN Protocol io.net announced the token economic model of IO. io.net will have an initial supply of 500 million IO at the time of creation, divided into five categories: seed investors, Series A investors, core contributors, R&D and ecosystem, and community. As IO is issued to incentivize network growth and adoption, it will grow to a fixed maximum supply of 800 million in 20 years. Rewards will be released to suppliers and pledgers every hour for 20 years. The rewards adopt a deflationary model, starting with 8% in the first year and decreasing by 1.02% per month (about 12% per year) until the upper limit of 800 million IO is reached. As rewards are issued, the share of early supporters and core contributors will continue to decrease. Therefore, after all rewards are distributed, the community's share will grow to 50%. BlockBeats previously reported that on March 5, io.net announced the completion of a $30 million Series A financing, led by Hack VC. Related reading: "io.net announces token economic model, one article to understand this hot project of AI+Depin"

Worldcoin will launch a new blockchain network World Chain

On April 17, Worldcoin announced that it will launch a new blockchain network World Chain later this year. It will be open to everyone, and verified users will have priority access to block space and will also receive GAS allowances for daily transactions. The network will be deeply integrated with the Worldcoin protocol, it will also be secured by Ethereum as L2, and scalability engineering will be carried out through the Superchain ecosystem. It will be permissionless, open source, and ultimately independently managed by the community.

Avail announces airdrop rules and launches airdrop query website

On April 19, modular blockchain solution provider Avail announced airdrop rules and launched airdrop query website. The reward categories include developers of the entire blockchain ecosystem, incentivized testnet contributors, aggregated users, Polygon PoS stakers, and community members who have made significant contributions to the blockchain ecosystem.

TON market value surpasses DOGE, becoming the 9th largest cryptocurrency by market value; Tether has expanded USDT to the TON network

On April 15, according to CoinGecko data, TON is now quoted at $6.93, with a market value of $24 billion, surpassing DOGE to become the 9th largest cryptocurrency by market value. On April 19, Telegram CEO Pavel Durov, together with TOP and Wallet CEO Andrew Rogozov and Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino, announced at the TOKEN2049 conference in Dubai that the USDT stablecoin will be integrated into the TON blockchain network, allowing Telegram Wallet users to send USDT to their contacts for free and instantly. To celebrate the launch of USDT-TON, Telegram Wallet will waive transaction fees for all USDT withdrawals to external TON wallets from now until the end of June.

This week, Tether issued a total of 2 billion USDT on Ethereum and Tron

On April 16, Tether Treasury minted an additional 1 billion USDT on the Tron blockchain. In response, Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said that the 1 billion USDT was a supplement to the Tron network inventory. This is an authorized but unissued transaction, which means that this additional issuance will be used for the inventory of the next issuance request and cross-chain exchange. On April 19, Tether issued an additional 1 billion USDT on the Ethereum network. Like Tron, this is also an authorized but unissued transaction, which means that this additional issuance will be used for the inventory of the next issuance request and cross-chain exchange.

Only 6 of the top 50 tokens by market value have outperformed BTC this year, including DOGE, SHIB and STX.

According to TradingView data, since the beginning of 2024, only 6 mainstream currencies in the top 50 crypto projects by market value have outperformed BTC, namely DOGE, SHIB, STX, BNB, MNT and RNDR. The price of Bitcoin has risen from $44,100 on January 1 to the current $65,000, a year-to-date increase of 54%.

Web3 communication platform Sending Labs completes a total of $20 million in seed extension round financing to rebuild the DePIN ecosystem such as the TCP/IP protocol

According to official news, Web3 communication platform SendingLabs recently announced the completion of a $7.5 million seed round extension financing, bringing its total seed round financing to $20 million. The investment, completed in October last year, included participation from Nomad Capital, Symbolic Capital, Web3.com Ventures, Galxe, SWC Global, Coinbase Ex-CTO Balaji Srinivasan, and Yield Guild Games co-founder Gabby Dizon, marking a revolutionary milestone in decentralized communications.

ByteDance subsidiary BytePlus reaches cooperation with Sui developers

On April 17, ByteDance subsidiary BytePlus will work with Mysten Labs to apply its services such as recommendation solutions and augmented reality products to Sui. The company selected Sui as the blockchain network to provide gaming and social application support services.

Hot Articles of the Week

Just now! Bitcoin completed its historic fourth halving!

A little after 8 am on April 20, as the Bitcoin network reached the 840,000th block, Bitcoin also completed its fourth halving. Before this halving, Bitcoin miners could get 6.25 Bitcoins for each successfully mined block; after the halving, this number dropped to 3.125. The Bitcoin halving process occurs automatically every four years, and the number of newly generated Bitcoins is halved each time until the total number reaches 21 million. This mechanism not only reduces the speed of new Bitcoin issuance, but also effectively curbs inflation.

Since the birth of Bitcoin in 2009, mining rewards have been reduced from 50 BTC per block to 3.125 BTC, and have undergone four halvings. Each halving has significantly increased the market value of Bitcoin, because the reduced supply has pushed up the price while demand remains unchanged. The next halving will occur when the block height reaches 1,050,000, which is expected to be February 2028.

Runes protocol is about to be launched, what preparations do users need to make for participation?

Runes protocol is the latest protocol deployed by Casey, the founder of Ordinals, to issue homogeneous tokens on the Bitcoin network. It allows Bitcoin transactions to etch, mint and transfer Bitcoin native digital goods. It is expected to be launched at the fourth Bitcoin halving (around April 19). How do users prepare their wallets? How to prepare UTXO? Crypto KOL Lilyanna Bitrili gave a detailed answer.

Special Topic｜Runes Protocol Online, Introductory Knowledge and Interactive Tutorial

The Runes Protocol has been officially launched with the Bitcoin halving. At the beginning of its launch, it triggered market fomo, and the Bitcoin network transaction fee once exceeded 2227 Sat/byte. In addition to pre-sold Runes mining projects such as Runestone and RSIC, the biggest driving force behind the Runes ecological boom is undoubtedly its sound infrastructure support. Before the main network was launched, the Runes protocol already had assets worth nearly $1 billion and more than 20 infrastructure platforms. This special topic collects the reasons for the birth of the Runes protocol, the ecological introduction and interactive tutorials, so that users can understand and experience the Runes ecology.

7 NFT projects worth paying attention to before the arrival of "Rune"

A month has passed, and "Rune" has not only become the absolute main line of the current Bitcoin NFT market, but also some changes have taken place in the popular "Rune" projects. Now, "dry mining" (that is, NFT itself is just a "mining machine") projects are not attractive enough. Only projects with attention and community PFP projects, or projects with "Rune infrastructure" narratives (such as Launchpad, DEX, browsers, etc.) can stand out. The "Rune" projects known to everyone have risen to a relatively high position, such as Runestone, Rune Pups, RSIC, etc. The editor here summarizes some recent Ordinals new project dynamics that are worth paying attention to.

Exclusive interview with Shenyu: There may be no "copycat season" in this bull market, pay attention to the development of modular blockchain

During the Hong Kong Web3 Carnival, we invited Shenyu, co-founder and CEO of Cobo, a digital asset custody solution provider, and co-founder of F2Pool, the world's largest mining pool, to be interviewed to talk about Shenyu's understanding of the industry cycle. In addition, with the upcoming Bitcoin halving, Shenyu shared how the changing pattern of the mining industry will affect the market. Interestingly, he also shared his current state of mind about his investment.

Dialogue with KOL | After working for VCs and project parties, she chose to be a "full-time retail investor", the philosophy of coin speculation by the powerful Alpha hunter Fiona

Among the new generation of powerful KOLs, Fiona is one of the most popular in the community. She began to emerge in the "Arbitrum craze" at the beginning of last year, and then seized the Ordinals inscription and PEPE market from March to May, and shined in the early bull market at the end of the year, leading her community members to discover many opportunities such as Ronin, TurtSat, and Auction, which are ten times or even a hundred times higher. At the moment when Bitcoin broke through the $70,000 mark and the market bullish sentiment continued to rise, she chose to "strategically lie flat" and successfully avoided the bloodbath in the crypto market last weekend. Many of her followers are curious about where this seed player with both good looks and strength came from? What is her philosophy of cryptocurrency trading?

Dubai flooded into the sea, and this group of people entered "survival mode" as soon as they landed

Token2049 is the hottest annual conference in the blockchain and Web3 industry. Many institutions and project teams hope to meet ideal investment targets and partners here. However, due to the impact of heavy rain and the fact that some participants have not yet arrived in Dubai, some pre-conference warm-up activities were basically empty except for the guests on the stage. Many participants joked: "I stayed in a luxury hotel but the roof was leaking. Going to Dubai to attend the conference turned into going to fight floods. Those who arrived at the airport were trapped at the airport, and those who did not reach their destination were trapped on the plane."

Hong Kong BTC and ETH spot ETFs passed. What is the significance to the industry?

On April 15, 2024, Harvest Global Investments announced that it had obtained the in-principle approval from the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission to launch two major digital asset (Bitcoin and Ethereum) spot ETF products. On the same day, China Asset Management (Hong Kong) also announced that it had obtained the approval of the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission to issue ETF products that invest in Bitcoin and Ethereum spot. In addition to Harvest Global and China Asset Management, the first batch of approved companies also included Bosera Fund and Value Partners Financial, although the latter two have not yet appeared in the latest updated list. According to the plan, the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission will list the spot Bitcoin ETF on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange around April 25, no later than the end of April.

Bullish analysts have cleared their positions. Are retail investors cutting their losses or buying at the bottom?

Entering the halving week, coupled with the impact of war factors, the entire crypto market is extremely weak. Meanwhile, the performance of altcoins has not improved in the new week. On April 16, the Cryptocurrency Fear and Greed Index was 62, a new low in nearly a month, and hype continued to cool. Risk assets represented by stocks and cryptocurrencies are on the verge of a major price adjustment. The main cause is unexpected and persistent inflation. The bond market currently expects less than three interest rate cuts and a 10-year Treasury yield of more than 4.50%. The market may have reached a critical tipping point for risk assets.

GCR: The Master of Reverse Trading in Crypto and His Legendary Journey

Before the halving, the market experienced an unexpected plunge. However, the "big short" in the crypto circle, the well-known legendary trader GCR, posted on social media to encourage every injured leek: "If you have been marginalized, this is a good opportunity to increase your position in the tokens you are sure of; if you have invested in full, then stick to it, stick to your spot position and don't surrender; someone once said that liquidation is the forced transfer of wealth from traders who need leverage to wealthy spot buyers." Looking back at GCR's experience in the past three years, you will find that his insight into the market is different from ordinary people.

SAFE is about to be traded, a look at the token economics and ecology

The decentralized custody protocol and digital asset management platform Safe (formerly Gnosis Safe) was launched in 2018. Its slogan is "Unlock Digital Asset Ownership". The offline team is mainly based in Berlin, Germany, and the Safe Foundation is registered in Zug, Switzerland. The release of the Ethereum ERC-4337 standard has made wallet account abstraction (AA) a mainstream narrative that may lead the cryptocurrencies to break through the circle. What is the magic of Safe, which has been favored and praised by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and OpenAI founder Sam Altman?

Interpretation of the recent Blob Army: BTC NFT full of artistic attributes

On the evening of April 10, Bit Plaza successfully held the "Send Blob" Space event with the Blob Army team. The price of its NFT also reached a new high of 0.0716 BTC on April 11. As of the time of posting, ME's platform data showed that TOTAL VOL had reached 177 BTC. In the past week or two, tweets with #BlobArmy and #SendBlob can often be seen on Twitter, as well as the widespread dissemination of various laser eye images. Let's take a look at how this newly emerged BTC NFT became so popular within a week.

Fjord Foundry platform coin is about to be LBP, one article to learn about Ethereum's leading LBP launch platform

LBP's fair launch is the IDO of this cycle. The author of this article, hitesh.eth, expressed his views on the platform on Twitter. He believes that we are in a new bull market cycle and need better designs, at least better than Dutch auctions, where whales buy up all the tokens in supply in seconds. We need fair launches, better, well-planned launches, and launches that we should bet on with more data and information. Fair launches are the current rigid demand, and the scale is getting bigger every day. It will only take a few months for everyone to start participating in fair launches. Now it's time to start studying the fair launches underway on Fjord Foundry.

Review of the 414 crash: Which of the more than 200 currencies are the most resistant to the drop and which rebound the most?

At 3 a.m. on April 14, Bitcoin started a new round of sharp declines, and the entire market collapsed. In this round of decline, which currency fell the least? Which currency rebounded the most after the decline? This article collects data on 257 currencies with a market value of more than 100 million US dollars in the Binance spot market to answer these two questions.

OMNI missed the best time to go public as soon as it went online?

On April 17, the Ethereum interoperability protocol Omni Network token OMNI was launched on Binance, and the opening price hit $55.5, and then fell back to $38.61. These newly launched tokens in April are facing the embarrassing situation of reaching their highs as soon as they are launched. On the one hand, there are factors such as the instability of the market and the depletion of liquidity in April. On the other hand, the airdrop plans of these projects cover a wide range. When the market is not good, the launch of tokens will face the situation of airdrops.

io.net announces the token economic model, and learn about this hot AI+Depin project in one article

On April 17, Solana Ecosystem DePIN Protocol io.net announced the token economic model of its token IO. Since the project is in the hot track of AI + Depin this year, and it has received $30 million in Series A financing, with a luxurious investment lineup, it has always attracted the attention of users. Crypto KOL Rocky gave a detailed introduction to the project.

　　Disclaimer: Includes third-party opinions. No financial advice. See Risk Warning.