Article source: Talk Li Talk Outside
The market has been quite interesting these past few days. Yesterday (April 23rd), Bitcoin's price rebounded to $94,700 (near the 0.236 Fibonacci level), and it seems to have successfully broken through the downward channel of the recent period, as shown in the following chart.
Thinking back to when the market was continuously declining, Bitcoin dropped to around $74,000, and many people were in panic and pessimism, with a bearish atmosphere dominating emotions. Just about two weeks later, with Bitcoin's rapid rebound, I now see many people, including some KOLs who previously declared a bearish stance, starting to turn bullish again, giving a sense of "bulls returning quickly".
From people's emotions, my intuitive feeling is that many have shifted from pessimism to optimism, filled with anticipation and hope that Bitcoin will soon reach over $100,000 again.
On the other hand, looking at the total market value of the crypto market, TOTAL has recovered to around $3 trillion, and simultaneously, BTC.D (Bitcoin's market cap dominance) has reached a relative high of 64.6% since February 2021, as shown in the following chart.
Bitcoin's dominance exceeding 64% also means that Altcoins continue to face overall liquidity challenges.
Although theoretically, based on past cycle experiences, when Bitcoin reaches a certain high proportion (around 65%), it often represents the potential arrival of a new Altcoin season, the current market environment suggests that if you want to capture potential Altcoin opportunities, it's best to prioritize focusing on mainstream coins (like SOL, ETH, or other sector leaders), while carefully controlling your position ratio and avoiding getting trapped in Altcoins (especially on-chain meme coins).
Today, I also saw an interesting piece of news about the MemeCoin TRUMP token. Trump once again leveraged his influence to promote the TRUMP token, causing its price to surge rapidly from $9.3 to $14.7, maintaining around $12.4 at the time of writing, as shown in the following chart.
A few days ago, many predicted that the TRUMP token would crash due to massive unlocks, but Trump's performance art once again exceeded expectations. Not only was the unlock of 40 million new tokens postponed by 90 days, but he also created a Trump dinner where the top 220 TRUMP token holders can get a luxury dinner, and the top 25 can additionally get a White House visit and dinner with Trump.
The GetTrumpMemes website even created a leaderboard showing real-time rankings of TRUMP token holders, with higher rankings for those holding more tokens for longer, likely continuing until May 12th, as shown in the following chart.
It's unclear whether this "influence mining" game initiated by Trump will be emulated by other influencers or KOLs, similar to how various leaders launched their own MemeCoin after TRUMP token's release.
While the market seems lively again, we shouldn't ignore potential risks. As we discussed in our previous article (April 22nd) from a macro perspective, the market will still have uncertainties and may face significant volatility in the short term, with the possibility of new black swan events, unless we see breakthrough developments like tariff changes or interest rate cuts.
Next, let's briefly discuss Ethereum:
If I'm not mistaken, we haven't specifically discussed ETH for over a month, as articles mentioning ETH (being bullish) would typically receive critical comments. This is understandable, as ETH has disappointed many times and performed poorly, making it challenging to be optimistic.
Now, many have begun abandoning ETH (with many moving to SOL), and Ethereum seems to be struggling to reverse its reputation through old achievements and upgrade proposals (Vitalik recently proposed replacing the existing EVM with RISC-V technology). Perhaps only a series of strong green candles could restore faith in decentralization.
However, with ETH showing some resilience recently, the ETH/BTC rate rebounding from the historical low of 0.01766 to 0.0195, let's discuss further.
From a price trend perspective:
While ETH remains in a downward channel, it has successfully broken through the mid-line around $1,550 (now a short-term support). If it can break $1,950 in the coming weeks, further positive developments are possible, as shown in the following chart.
From ecosystem and development perspectives:
First, the Pectra upgrade is scheduled to launch on the mainnet on May 7th. This upgrade primarily introduces EIP-7702, allowing EOAs (standard Ethereum accounts) to extend smart contract functionality, supporting batch transactions, gas sponsorship, and social recovery. For ETH stakers, Pectra also introduces improved validator effective balance functionality. Summarized, it offers enhanced scalability, lower transaction costs, and a more comprehensive staking mechanism, as shown in the following chart.
Secondly, Ethereum's current main narratives are primarily three:
- ETF Staking
The SEC's review has been postponed to June this year. While uncertain, based on current information, approval seems inevitable.
- DeFi Revival
The Pectra upgrade will further stimulate Ethereum's DeFi ecosystem revival. Additionally, with stablecoins' global development and potential future US dollar interest rate cuts, on-chain finance might enter a new development phase.
- RWA Expansion
Currently, in terms of issuance volume and total locked value, the Ethereum network still occupies the primary position, as shown in the chart below.
For instance, the RWA tokenized fund issued by BlackRock (BUIDL, BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund) currently accounts for over 90% on the Ethereum chain, as shown in the chart below. This seemingly demonstrates the traditional large financial institutions' recognition of Ethereum's settlement layer (whether this will change in the future is unknown, but it is the case currently). As shown in the chart below.
In summary, with changes in regulatory policies, the partial recovery of DeFi, deep participation of traditional financial institutions, and continuous construction of the Ethereum network and ecosystem... we believe that Ethereum remains worthy of attention and importance in the future.
Of course, we have only mentioned some aspects of being optimistic about Ethereum in the long term. In fact, the changes in anything are always two-sided, such as Ethereum's initial transition from PoW to PoS, the impact of Vitalik Buterin's personal actions on Ethereum, and so on... These remain focal points of controversial discussions for many people.
The problems Ethereum currently faces seem to not only be issues with ETH itself but potentially challenges faced by the blockchain industry. After developing for over a decade, most blockchain applications are still positioned and stuck in a "casino" framework.
In the past, there were only thousands of Altcoins, and ETH naturally could be the "king of Altcoins". However, now there are millions of Altcoins (estimated to exceed 100 million tokens by the end of 2025). If ETH wants to continue surpassing expectations in price and maintain its position as the "king of Altcoins", it seems to need a more convincing new narrative (story) in addition to the basic narrative support we mentioned. Alternatively, breakthroughs in other aspects (such as changes in macroeconomic conditions, policy-driven factors, fundamental changes in chip structure, etc.) could occur. But if I must choose only one project for a longer-term bet from the millions of projects excluding BTC, I personally still tend to choose ETH.
