Crypto market repositioning: The pain of transition amid global liquidity woes

近期，随着ETF通道的打开，加密市场所期待的“泼天资金量”并未达预期，全球金融市场的流动性匮乏问题蔓延至加密市场。新通道的打开也意味着之前那个复杂且成熟市场的规则随之与加密市场的文化与投资逻辑相碰撞。于是，加密市场从一个近乎封闭的避风港变成了汪洋大海中的一叶扁舟。市场性质的根本转变也带来了新的挑战。

比特币，不再是数字黄金？

理解加密市场，我们从占比一半的比特币开始。

Pic: Dominance of Bitcoin and other crypto in the overall market from 2nd quarter of 2013 to 1st quarter of 2024

Source: statista

回望今年，我们可以观察到几个关键事件。例如，今年4月伊朗与以色列的紧张关系导致伊朗的报复行动，尽管亚太市场对此反应并不体现在金融市场上，但是比特币却出现了明显的下跌。此外，美国的经济数据也不仅牵动着美国的金融市场，更是拨动了比特币的神经。例如上半年的几次美国失业人数上升且超过预期值，市场就会认为这促使了央行采取更加宽松的货币政策，反而可以推动美股的反弹，同时也推动了比特币随之上涨。

过去，我们把比特币视为“数字黄金”，认为它与美元运行呈逆周期。然而，现在看来，比特币更像是纳斯达克的“放大器”。这些新进入的机构投资者对标传统股票债券来说，比特币对他们而言是缺少基本面分析的（财务指标和现金流分析），其价值主要由市场供需和投资信任决定，因此商品属性加上情绪指标反而成为了机构投资者所依赖的量化走势。加之，在加密市场对杠杆的广泛应用，比特币波动性更大，这是我们需要适应的新市场特性。

对比7次加息的2022年，加密市场需求明显降低

以美国市场为例，M2（广义货币供应量）自2022年上半年开始，M2在缓慢下降。据Macromicro.me统计，2022年自3月至12月的7次美联储加息让美国市场净流动性指数数显示了快速的下跌，此后并未增加。美国2022年的加息政策对市场流动性产生了显著影响，市场流动性并未维持一个之前的增长。随之，加密市场需求也明显降低。

We choose stablecoins to take an in-depth look at the needs of the crypto market. Because the stablecoin issuance mechanism determines that its issuance can represent the market's demand for the crypto market. The overall market value of stablecoins has increased by approximately US$30 billion since 2024 (about half a year). Compared with the second half of 2021 and the first half of 2022, the growth rate has decreased significantly. What's more, the period from 2021 to the first half of 2022 happens to be a time of tight liquidity in the global financial market. This means that the crypto market has changed from a hedging risk market to a small boat in this vast ocean.

From this, we can roughly conclude that the general style of the entire crypto market has changed from a nearly closed market that hedges financial risks to a market that is more economically sensitive, and Bitcoin has also changed from "digital gold" ” has become the “amplifier” of the U.S. stock market such as Nasdaq. Economic indicators affect liquidity in the market and directly affect the crypto market.

This OTC is not that OTC, injecting liquidity into the market

Under the existing established macro policies, how do we solve the liquidity of the crypto market? There are two general methods: one is to promote the participation of institutional investors; the other is to improve market infrastructure. Here we focus on the first method.

In promoting the participation of institutional investors, over-the-counter trading (OTC) is an indispensable or currently ignored channel by the crypto market. Specifically, let’s take a single global Bitcoin currency as an example. According to CryptoQuant statistics, the daily balance of the OTC trading desk fluctuates between 100,000 and 500,000 BTC (calculated based on the BTC price of approximately US$65,000, which is approximately 6.5 billion to $32.5 billion). In comparison, average daily inflows into Bitcoin ETFs are approximately $122 million (Farside Invest data, as of July 5, UTC+8), which is equivalent to dozens to hundreds of times over-the-counter transactions.

The OTC that everyone is already familiar with in the crypto market is slightly different. The OTC we are familiar with refers more to the bridge between legal currency and cryptocurrency. This is due to compliance in ETFs and other Before the emergence of channels, OTC channels were the main channels accessible to the public. However, from a financial market perspective, the other two financial market functions of OTC - the main channel for large-value transactions and liquidity provision and market stability - need to be developed.

In terms of institutional investors, RWA is another method that is often mentioned. However, the author believes that improving liquidity of RWA requires truly accepting the use of encrypted assets as a unit of account, and RWA should be issued on the public chain instead of being limited to alliance chains or private chains. At present, RWA mainly stays in enterprise-level alliance chains or alliance chains between financial institutions. For example, Hedera cooperated with Blackrock in April this year to tokenize money market funds (MMF), using an incomplete decentralized public platform. chain solution.

As the Web3 market continues to evolve, we can see its inherent changes. The crypto market has gradually transformed from a once safe-haven niche into an area that is highly sensitive to economic dynamics. Bitcoin has also transformed from "digital gold" into an "amplifier" for U.S. stock markets such as Nasdaq. In response to the recent liquidity problems in the encryption market, we need to solve them in a multi-pronged manner. Not only must we adapt to the fluctuations of the macroeconomic cycle, but we must also pay attention to and develop business areas that have been neglected in the past, thereby injecting new vitality and improving the stability and maturity of the market.

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