Aptos, the World’s Best Performing Asset in 2023

On January 5, 2023, we pointed out that the crypto market structure was improving and that “Ethereum could rally by +27% into the March Shanghai upgrade”. Since then, Ethereum is up +30%.

On January 20, 2023, we showed how “Bitcoin tends to rally by +9% around Chinese New Year”. A Tweet mentioning this study received 239,500 views (our Twitter handle: DeFiOnTarget). Subsequently, Bitcoin is now +10% higher since we sent out the email.

🚩 A few bullet points:

Aptos is proof that crypto is just not going away. Talented developers from Web2 companies entering the space are still receiving funding from venture capital investors, supported by a well run marketing machinery while traders are still looking to invest in tokens that could increase by hundreds of percent - even if the risk is high.

👇 1) Aptos rallied +109% last 1w as Binance announced the opening of APT liquidity pools with BTC and USDT pairs on Jan 20. Year-to-date, Aptos has rallied +429%, making it the world’s best performing asset.

👇 2) APT price began its meteoric rise two weeks ago (on Jan 9) when the popular DEX PancakeSwap community voted in favor of continuing development on Aptos with 60% of Aptos’ $58m TVL currently being deposited on PancakeSwap.

👇 3) This rally also coincided with the start of “Xangle Blockchain Foundation Week” in Korea (+463% since then) where Aptos was presented favorably. Aptos is also an extremely well marketed project.

Exhibit 1: Aptos is currently the world’s best performing asset in 2023

👇 4) Aptos now has a market cap of $2.9bn and a 24 hour trading volume of $2.3bn.

👇 5) The rally has helped increase interest in Aptos’ NFTs as the Aptos’ NFT marketplace Topaz saw a rise in floor prices for several NFT projects, with its top 10 collections benefitting from a surge in trading volumes.

👇 6) Aptos’ funding rate trades negative (around -150% on ByBit and -238% on Binance), a sign that some traders are shorting it.

👇 7) However, this reminds “Matrix on Target” of XRP Ripple which had 50% of their trading volume driven by Korean retail investors during the 2017 peak when the token went 10x in a matter of weeks.

👇 8) The large up moves during the last 48 hours have been driven by two big, short squeezes. By far, the largest volume comes from ByBit for Aptos, which is estimated to have its web traffic source from Russia 19% and Korea 14%.

👇 9) Aptos, created by ex-Libra developers, was only launched on October 19 2022, with many users criticizing the project’s lack of transparency around its tokenomics and APT declining by -72% after its launch before its meteoric rise.

👇 10) Core developers were allocated 19% of the tokens, 16% went to the Aptos Foundation, 13% to private investors and the other 51% to the community. The team raised $200m from A16Z earlier in the year.