2024 Year in Review: The Thriving Development of Web3 Financial Infrastructure

In 2024, the cryptocurrency market ushered in new development opportunities. From the approval of Bitcoin spot ETFs to the market's focus shifting towards innovation and competition within a compliant framework, the entire industry has undergone a profound transformation. Let's look back at the important moments in the construction of Web3 financial infrastructure this year; these moments not only reflect the rapid development of the market but also herald the arrival of a "Web3 Golden Decade."

January: Financing and Valuation Breakthrough

At the beginning of the year, a well-known blockchain group completed nearly $100 million in Series A financing, with a pre-investment valuation exceeding $1.2 billion, joining the ranks of "unicorn companies." This financing not only reflects investors' confidence in the company, but also represents the financial market's recognition of the compliant path for cryptocurrencies.

April: Global Expansion and ETF Development

April is an important month for the development of the cryptocurrency industry. An international licensed trading platform has obtained an F license granted by the Bermuda Monetary Authority, allowing it to provide licensed virtual asset trading services. This marks the official entry of the group into the "dual flagship era" of licensed exchanges, accelerating the pace of building the world's largest cluster of licensed exchanges.

In the same month, Hong Kong approved the listing of 6 Bitcoin and Ethereum spot ETFs on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Among them, two ETFs innovatively introduced the world's first "coin-holding" redemption mechanism, opening up new channels for traditional compliant funds to enter the crypto market.

May: Compliance Milestones

In May, a virtual asset trading platform obtained an operating virtual asset trading platform (AMLO license) under the Anti-Money Laundering Ordinance in Hong Kong. This makes the group a unicorn company that possesses all the necessary licenses to provide virtual asset-related services in the Hong Kong region.

June: Breakthroughs in Technical Infrastructure

In June, a company's cloud service platform successfully entered the Top 3 in Asia and the Top 10 globally among node validation service providers. The platform covers over 80 mainstream public chains, with a total asset management scale exceeding 3.8 billion USDT. At the same time, it launched STO infrastructure products targeting scenarios such as equity token financing and fund tokenization.

July to August: Exchange Development and New Business Expansion

In July, several leading brokerages in Hong Kong received upgrades to their Type 1 licenses. One exchange, as one of the first virtual asset exchanges in Hong Kong targeting retail users, launched professional comprehensive services at an institutional level. This exchange also collaborated with companies that entered the Hong Kong Monetary Authority's stablecoin issuance sandbox to promote the issuance of HKD-pegged stablecoins.

In August, an over-the-counter trading platform obtained a major payment institution license from the Monetary Authority of Singapore, providing regulated digital payment token trading services for clients. At the same time, a certain group announced its participation in the Hong Kong Monetary Authority's Ensemble project to explore the tokenization and trading of real-world assets including carbon credits, green assets, and money market funds (RWA).

November: Development of Ecological Coins

In November, after a long period of refinement, a certain group launched its ecological coin on multiple leading exchanges. This token can be applied in a wide range of scenarios, including transaction fee discounts within the ecosystem, exclusive token pre-purchase rights, and node validation rewards, and will serve as the native token and fuel token for the future public chain.

December: Public Chain Infrastructure

In December, an L2 public chain characterized by "compliance-friendly" was officially launched, aiming to provide global users with faster and lower-cost full-stack on-chain Web3 solutions, while offering multi-dimensional and multi-level compliance-friendly on-chain infrastructure for the on-chain deployment of traditional financial products.

Looking Ahead to 2025: Stepping into the Golden Decade of Web3

In 2024, we witnessed the deep integration of on-chain and off-chain financial markets driven by innovative financial instruments such as licensed exchanges, ETFs, RWAs, STOs, and stablecoins. These developments have laid a solid foundation for the flourishing of Web3 in the next decade, ushering in a new era full of opportunities.