Three Months Later, Bitcoin Retests $50,000 Level Again — Market Stabilization Creates Prime Opportunity for NFT Boom

According to OKX real-time data, at 10:30 AM yesterday, Bitcoin broke through the $50,000 mark for the first time in over three months, briefly surging to $50,504, before experiencing some mild volatility and pulling back. At the time of writing, the price stood at $49,668.

The market has been closely monitoring Bitcoin's trajectory. As a bellwether for the crypto world, Bitcoin suffered consecutive drops in mid-May, falling from $55,667 to a low of $28,808, before entering a $30,000–$40,000 consolidation range. After being effectively pulled back three times upon falling below $30,000, Bitcoin initiated a five-week upward trend on July 21 and broke above $50,000 on August 23.

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The breakthrough of this key resistance level naturally sparked discussions in the market about Bitcoin's next move. Jake Wujastyk, Chief Market Analyst at Trend Spider, believes that if Bitcoin can hold above $50,000, given the speed and volume of the prior decline, it could rally to around $54,000. However, if it fails to establish a firm foothold, it may quickly pull back to $47,000.

Katie Stockton, Founder and Managing Partner of Fairlead Strategies, noted that Bitcoin is approaching resistance above $51,000 based on Fibonacci retracement levels, so a natural pause at this level is expected. That said, no clear "sell" signal has emerged, and Ethereum's trajectory is similar. Of course, if both crypto assets decisively close above the resistance level twice, further upside would follow. While $51,000 represents a natural short-term pause point in the rally, Bitcoin's long-term momentum has strengthened, with the 200-day moving average turning upward again, supporting a bullish long-term outlook.

William Noble, Chief Technical Analyst at research platform Token Metrics, takes an even more aggressive stance than the other two. He believes $50,000 is by no means the resistance — Bitcoin's true resistance zone should be around $56,000, which could be reached in the next 2–3 days. "The fact that Bitcoin rebounded without pulling back is telling us that a major rally is coming. A wave of speculation will sweep through the crypto market," Noble added.

Sean Rooney, Head of Research at Valkyrie Investments, believes Bitcoin will experience a pause and consolidation, given that it has already closed green for five consecutive weeks.

Worth noting, this Friday will see 24,600 BTC call options and 15,300 put options expiring and settling. Close attention should be paid to market movements. Additionally, the annual Jackson Hole Global Central Bank Symposium will be held from August 26 to 28, with the theme "Monetary Policy in a Balanced Economy." Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell will deliver remarks. The Jackson Hole symposium is widely regarded as a bellwether for the next phase of policy direction from global central banks, especially the Federal Reserve, making it一如既往地重要. The market had broadly expected Chairman Powell to unveil more Taper details at this event, but given the resurgence of COVID-19 cases driven by the Delta variant, the Fed may revert to a wait-and-see mode — he may not signal the start of Taper. Powell is more likely to announce Taper-related details at the September FOMC meeting. Nevertheless, we should keep a close eye on this Jackson Hole Global Central Bank Symposium. We previously discussed the key factors behind Fed rate hikes and their potential impact on Bitcoin. If interested, click to view details.

OpenSea Trading Volume Hits New Highs — NFT Market Remains Red-Hot

Bitcoin's strong rally has also laid the foundation for a broader crypto market recovery. Following the rise of GameFi led by Axie Infinity and the popularity of avatar (profile picture) NFTs, the NFT ecosystem has gradually diversified from a single category, with the market scale expanding at a staggering pace.

Yesterday, payments giant Visa announced the purchase of CryptoPunk #7610 — one of 3,840 female Punks — for approximately $150,000 last week. Cuy Sheffield, Visa's Head of Crypto, said Visa owns several classic artworks related to commerce as part of its art collection, including early paper credit cards and knuckle busters (point-of-sale terminals that merchants used to record credit card transactions before e-commerce emerged). Crypto Punks are a great addition to Visa's collectibles, having pioneered the NFT technology and NFT commerce wave. These collectibles depict and celebrate the past, present, and future of commerce.

Visa reportedly purchased the CryptoPunk in partnership with Anchorage Digital, which facilitated the trade and holds the NFT in custody for Visa. Visa also released an NFT whitepaper to help businesses understand how to integrate NFTs into their platforms and how Visa can assist.

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Cuy Sheffield said that as Visa's core role, it hopes to help consumers purchase NFTs and enable merchants to accept NFTs as easily as they accept traditional digital goods and e-commerce. Currently, Visa is also actively engaging with many clients to help them understand how to participate in the NFT ecosystem.

Following Visa's entry, Larva Labs, the development team behind Crypto Punks, tweeted that trading volume for Crypto Punks exceeded $100 million in the past 24 hours. Currently, even the cheapest Punk is listed at 73.44 ETH, equivalent to $244,700.

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According to Crypto Slam data, the total trading volume of Crypto Punks has exceeded $814 million, ranking second among all NFT projects, trailing only Axie Infinity, with 2,947 unique holders.

Beyond Crypto Punks, the recent performance of Ether Rocks has also caught the attention of the crypto market. Ether Rocks is one of the first crypto collectibles issued on the Ethereum blockchain after Crypto Punks. Each Ether Rock displays a static image of a rock, each painted in a unique color but with identical shape and size. The total supply of Ether Rocks is 100. The first Ether Rock was sold on December 26, 2017, for 0.099 ETH (approximately $75 at the time).

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Etherscan data shows that during the first three years since launch, only about 20 rocks were sold, priced between 0.1 and 0.36 ETH. It was only recently — driven by NFT speculation — that Ether Rocks began gaining traction, benefiting from the first-mover advantage of an early project, evoking nostalgia, and extreme scarcity of just 100 tokens. Ether Rock #87 was sold for 187 ETH (approximately $610,000).

In BitMEX founder Arthur Hayes' recent article titled "NFT Prices Are Not Expensive — Because Humans Love Flaunting Uniqueness," Ether Rocks were also mentioned. Like traditional art, a healthy ecosystem of speculators will inevitably be drawn to NFTs. In the art world, they call themselves dealers or collectors, but they are betting on which worthless things will one day be "treasured" by humanity. Doing it well and profiting over time is extremely difficult. This is equally true in the NFT space. There are many questions, and there are no right or wrong answers, but there will be a group of traders who excel at narrative construction and meme propagation, who will be able to accumulate the most sought-after NFTs and earn substantial returns in the process.

The breakthrough of NFTs in 2021, the speculative frenzy around Crypto Punks, Ether Rocks, Axie Infinity, and others, fueled OpenSea's prosperity. On Ethereum's Gas burn leaderboard, OpenSea tops the chart with 10,800 ETH burned, followed by DeFi DEX leader Uniswap.

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Currently, OpenSea's total user address count has exceeded 250,000, a 608% increase compared to the beginning of the year.

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Monthly active users (registered users who traded at least once on OpenSea) also hit an all-time high in August, reaching 150,900, a 20-fold increase from the beginning of the year.

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Unlike Nifty Gateway, Super Rare, Rarible, Foundation, and other NFT trading platforms that focus on NFT artwork or niche and creative communities, OpenSea positions itself as a comprehensive, open marketplace with no review required — anyone can create NFTs on the platform. This has made it the most diverse trading platform by category coverage, where users can trade a wide range of NFT assets including art, music, domain names, virtual worlds, cards, collectibles, sports, and more. Currently, the number of NFTs on OpenSea has exceeded 18.8 million.

Currently, OpenSea's primary revenue model relies on trading fees, charging a 2.5% fee on each trade. While this rate is dozens of times higher than standard crypto trading platforms, it remains among the lowest in the NFT industry, where most NFT trading platforms charge between 10%–20% in fees.

According to Dune Analytics data, OpenSea's daily trading volume has exceeded $100 million for three consecutive days, setting a record high of $195 million on August 23.

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Looking at monthly trading volume, although August has yet to conclude, it is clear that it has formed a massive spike compared to previous months. As of August 24, cumulative trading volume has reached $1.745 billion, a 435% increase over July's $326 million. At this pace, August's total volume could very well surpass $2 billion.

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Since OpenSea's revenue model primarily relies on trading fees, its revenue is positively correlated with trading volume. As of August 24, OpenSea's total revenue has exceeded $125 million. According to statistics, OpenSea's total revenue in Q1 was $16.23 million, Q2 was $20.96 million, and July alone was $21.86 million — already surpassing the entirety of Q2. August, still not yet complete, has exceeded the combined revenue of all seven previous months, underscoring the extraordinary heat of the NFT market.

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A few days ago, curated crypto art platform Super Rare announced the launch of Super Rare DAO, alongside an airdrop of 150 million governance tokens (RARE) to early users. According to Etherscan data, an address ending in 0x9b80fe3414c397492ea8026 received the largest airdrop, claiming 4.43 million RARE tokens, worth over $8 million at current market prices.

This move sparked market speculation about NFT platforms launching governance tokens — following Rarible, and now Super Rare, the question arises: will OpenSea, the current largest NFT trading platform, follow suit? Especially given Uniswap's precedent.

That said, in terms of fundraising, OpenSea announced the completion of a $100 million Series B round on July 20, led by a16z, with angel investors including Mark Cuban participating. Post-round, OpenSea's valuation reached $1.5 billion. In March 2021, OpenSea completed a $23 million Series A round, also led by a16z. It is evident that its fundraising has largely been equity-based, with no apparent token issuance plan. Nevertheless, it triggered a wave of interaction热潮 among crypto users on OpenSea.

Bitcoin's breakthrough above $50,000 followed by a modest pullback has sparked intense market discussion on its future trajectory, while the upcoming Jackson Hole Global Central Bank Symposium also commands market attention. On the other hand, market hot money has poured into NFTs, with surging prices for popular projects pushing OpenSea's trading volume and user numbers to repeated record highs. However, OpenSea's total user address count of just 250,000 is still a drop in the ocean compared to the 221 million global crypto asset users reported by Crypto.com as of June 2021 — illustrating that the NFT market remains in its early stages and the future is still full of uncertainties.

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