Jeff, Partner of OKX Ventures: Talking about the Current Development Trend and Future of Bitcoin Ecosystem

On April 9, OKX Ventures partner Jeff attended the 2024 Hong Kong Web3 Carnival sponsored by OKX Web3 and delivered a keynote speech on “Exploring the Future of Bitcoin Ecology” at the main venue. This forum is themed on Bitcoin and is co-organized by Wanxiang Blockchain Lab, HashKey Group and Nervos CKB.

Jeff first shared the development of the Bitcoin ecosystem. He said that in the past two years, the cryptocurrency market has continued to develop, and the OKX Ventures team has always been optimistic about its underlying value attributes and development resilience. In terms of trading volume, this round of rising cycle began in September 2023. As of March 2024, its monthly total transactions have exceeded 7 trillion US dollars.

Moreover, compared with the data released by the World Bank in 2022: the total trading volume of US stocks is 43.22 trillion US dollars, and the trading volume of cryptocurrencies is already at the same level. Secondly, from the perspective of investment and financing in the crypto market, after the madness of 2021 and 2022, the total market investment in 2023 fell back to around 10 billion US dollars. The investment areas are mainly focused on infrastructure, games, DeFi and other fields. **The total investment and financing in the first quarter of 2024 exceeded 2.6 billion US dollars, which is temporarily in a mild state compared with historical data. **

Of course, what is more noteworthy is that based on Bitcoin’s UTXO, SegWit and other technologies and Taproot upgrades, as well as Ordinals, Atomicals and other protocols, the underlying infrastructure for the issuance of BTC’s NFT, Token and other assets has been built. As of April 1, 2024, according to data statistics from OKLink, Dune and brc-20.io: **The total number of inscriptions is 64,066,164. **

When talking about the development of the Bitcoin ecosystem, Jeff believes that Bitcoin Layer 2 came into being in the context of Bitcoin itself not being Turing complete and not supporting smart contracts, which limits the development of more complex Bitcoin ecosystem businesses. The purpose of developing these protocols is to provide scalability for the Bitcoin network by processing transactions outside the Bitcoin main chain, thereby improving the overall performance of Bitcoin.

**Of course, in addition to ecological progress, this year’s BTC spot ETF listing is a milestone event in the industry. **At the beginning of the year, the US SEC finally approved the listing of Bitcoin spot ETF. As of April 1, the average daily net inflow of Bitcoin spot ETF **is $219 million, and the average daily trading volume is $3.37 billion. **

This year, the BTC halving is another industry-level event. This halving is affected by many aspects of the new developments in the Bitcoin ecosystem, especially the growth of inscriptions and the listing of spot ETFs. The emergence of Bitcoin inscriptions has injected new vitality into on-chain activities, and the continued growth of on-chain activities has benefited from the renewed attention of developers and the innovation of the Bitcoin blockchain. At the same time, the widespread adoption of Bitcoin ETFs may absorb selling pressure, reshape the market structure, and provide a new source of stable demand for BTC prices. These factors have jointly had a certain impact on BTC prices.

In addition to the dynamics related to Bitcoin itself, the combination of AI and Crypto has also been a focus of recent industry attention. At present, we see that from the perspective of technical development, there may be the following points of integration:

• Through the decentralization and permanent storage characteristics of blockchain, it provides solid integrity support for AI data and models
• The introduction of the token economy will more effectively support the incentive and payment mechanisms for AI in terms of data, models, and computing resources
• With the continuous development of blockchain technology and the improvement of computing power, it is expected that AI models can be deployed on the chain in the future, promoting the deep integration of blockchain and artificial intelligence, and bringing unprecedented transformation and innovation opportunities to various industries.

When talking about OKX Ventures’ investment layout, Jeff admitted that in the face of the challenging and based crypto market, OKX Ventures has always actively embraced industry construction and insisted on contributing its own meager efforts. In 2023, OKX Ventures’ total external investment exceeded US$50 million, covering multiple fields including the Bitcoin ecosystem, with the core area focusing on infrastructure.

“OKX Ventures actively invests in and supports innovative projects within the BTC ecosystem, providing not only financial support but also additional resources to promote success. For example, we have co-organized a winter roadshow for Bitcoin ecosystem projects with other industry partners to actively guide and encourage more developers to join the Bitcoin ecosystem. In the future, OKX Ventures also looks forward to actively cooperating with more high-quality project parties, providing in-depth support, providing high-quality services to users, and contributing to the industry.” Jeff concluded.

About OKX Ventures

As the investment arm of OKX, OKX Ventures focuses on exploring and investing in innovative projects in the blockchain technology and digital currency ecosystem. We are committed to promoting the healthy development of the industry through investment support and looking for emerging technologies and business models that can drive the digital economy forward.