Triaconta Weekly #247

The following topics will be addressed in this weekly:

  • Bundle performance
  • Winners & Losers
  • What is Aptos?

Bundle performance
Over the first two months of the year, all bundles have shown excellent returns. This week, we are taking a step back due to uncertainty about US rules for crypto banks. It really is time for clarity there now so institutions can get back in as well. Investors are also worried again about rising inflation and another 0.50% interest rate hike is likely in the Eurozone in May.

Big3 bundle
The average rise over the first two months is 34%. Bitcoin leads and Ethereum comes close behind. XRP lags behind but is going to show its worth this year.

1 Month: -3.60% | 7D: -5.93% | 24H: -4.04%

Top 30 bundle
The average increase over the first two months is 52%. Filecoin, Hedera and Solana have more than doubled and XRP (+12%) is lagging due to the court case with the SEC where a ruling is expected by the end of March at the latest.

1 Month: -7.94% | 7D: -12.07% | 24H: -5.40%

PennyStock bundle
The average increase over the first two months is 76%. Ankr, Gala, Jasmycoin and Zilliqa have more than doubled, with only Doge (+18%) lagging a little behind.

1 Month: -1.92% | 7D: -16.42% | 24H: -7.40%

DeFi bundle
The average increase over the first two months is 80%. Fantom (added September ’22) and The Graph more than doubled and all coins in the bundle rose >35%.

1 Month: -3.32% | 7D: -9.58% | 24H: -4.42%

Winners & Losers
Maker (+29%) is this week’s saviour of the DeFi bund due to the growing popularity of their DAI stable coin. Former DeFi coin Yearn.Finance (+20%) has already almost doubled this year. However, most coins are down this week with Ankr (-21%) and Filecoin (-18%) at the top, but both still more than doubled this year. Hedera (-16%) and Oasis Network (-13%), which we did manage to add at low cost when revising the PennyStock bundle.

Bitcoin rose 0.03% in February, recording the most stable month in its entire existence!

What is Aptos ?

The Revision of the bundles has been completed again and we have added three new tokens to the platform. Aptos enables barrier-free DeFi projects on a blockchain with a throughput of 130,000 transactions per second. So far, there are more than 30 DeFi projects working on this new ecosystem. These projects include decentralised exchanges, leveraged trading, lending protocols and liquid staking. Aptos (APT) has been part of the revised Top30 bundle since Tuesday.

How it started
Facebook started its own Diem blockchain years ago for payments between Facebook users. The Rust-based Move language was developed for smart contracts, and parallel execution of transactions created a super-fast blockchain. Soon Facebook was forced by regulators to pull the plug on the project but many developers gathered in Aptos Labs and built on the already developed solid foundation and independently of Meta (formerly Facebook) to create what has now become the Aptos blockchain. Aptos network officially went live on 12 October 2022.

Aptos funding
Aptos Labs raised $200 million in March 2022 from venture capitalists such as a16z (Andreessen Horowitz), Tiger Global and Multicoin Capital. In July, $150 million was added from FTX Ventures and Jump Crypto. Aptos Labs received another undisclosed amount of strategic investment from Binance Labs in September. Currently, Aptos Labs has 28 major investors. This has resulted in 85% of the tokens being owned by investors and the Aptos team. The large investments give confidence that the development of this blockchain can continue for a long time to come. This, of course, has everything to do with the founders’ trustworthiness, unique architecture and impressive performance.

From November 2023, a portion of tokens from large investors will be released monthly over a three-year period. If there are enough projects active on Aptos by then, it is not expected to lead to many sales and thus not have much impact on the share price. The only caveat to note is that venture capitalists could also run into financial difficulties and, despite positive prospects at Aptos, might still decide to sell their Apt tokens once the lock-up period is over.

Gaming
A partnership between NPixel and Aptos was announced late last year. Based in South Korea, Triple-A gaming studio Npixel is best known for its massively multiplayer online role-playing game, Gran Saga, which quickly became one of the top-performing game apps in the Apple App store in Korea (with the record 4 million downloads since its initial launch in Korea and Japan). This year, Gran Saga: Unlimited will be released on Aptos as the first MMORPG Web3 blockchain game.

Conclusion
Although a lot of fast, secure and scalable blockchains already exist, Aptos still seems unique due to its very high transaction speed and Move smart contract programming language. If Aptos can attract more projects in the DeFi, Gaming and NFT areas and continues to develop like with the just-released software development kit for game developers, it can come close to Avalanche, Solana and maybe in the distant future even Ethereum.

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