I have been thinking about a question:
If now is the starting point of a new round of rise, what is the driving force of the bull market?
The cryptocurrency market is small and there are too many factors that influence short-term trends.
Macroeconomic interest rate decisions? These could impact the US stock market and global financial markets, with the cryptocurrency world undoubtedly bearing the brunt. However, macroeconomic forecasts are difficult to predict, and aside from the Federal Reserve, few can truly predict interest rate policies.
What about sentiment? The ups and downs and fluctuations in the cryptocurrency market often signal market reversals. However, the current sentiment hasn't reached extreme levels of fomo or panic, but rather a warmer range. We can only say that the market is likely to continue its upward trend. More importantly, sentiment is often a posteriori indicator of market trends, making it difficult to predict in the short term.
There are also other masters who look at K-line and draw charts. I am not good at this aspect. In my understanding, technical analysis can only be used as a reference. Single technical analysis or analysis of a single technical indicator can easily lead to misjudgment.
So what is the main theme? A quote from Xiao Ming (@RiceMaximalist) enlightened me: This bull market is driven by capital buying, including both over-the-counter (ETFs and DATs) and on-the-counter (profit buybacks).
- Based on this idea, let’s review the biggest protagonist of this round, Solana:
Solana's current round of buying is primarily driven by over-the-counter (OTC) DATs. For example, Galaxy, the largest DAT, has raised $1.65 billion as of September 12th. It has already purchased approximately 1.75 million SOLs, valued at $430 million, leaving approximately $1.21 billion remaining. (https://intel.arkm.com/explorer/entity/forward-industries)
There are also reports that Galaxy has purchased around $1 billion worth of Solana over the weekend, but there is no clear evidence that these purchases belong to DAT. If they do, then DAT has basically completed all purchases.
Let’s first calculate based on the number of purchases not made:
Currently, Solana's circulation is total circulation - Native Staking (staking - liquidity staking) = 542 million - 378 million = 164 million.
The remaining unpurchased DAT funds can purchase approximately 5 million DAT, equivalent to 3% of the total circulation.
Considering that Pantera’s new DAT has just been announced, and there is still 1.25B of funds that have not been used to purchase Solana, we also estimate the total amount that can be purchased to be 3%.
The equivalent of 6% of the total circulation will be purchased in the near future, which provides strong support for the price of Solana.
So how much can Solana increase by purchasing 6% of the total circulation?
We compare it with ETH. The total ETF net inflow of ETH from July to August is 9.3B, and the total DAT market value is 13B. We roughly regard the market value as the market value of ETH that has been purchased, which means that 22.3B of ETH has been purchased in these two months.
The total circulation of Ethereum is 123 million, with a current value of 492B (estimated based on ETH 4000 USD), and the purchase ratio is 4.5%.
For Ethereum's 560B plate, external purchases account for 4.5% of the circulating volume, which is about a 76% increase from July to August (calculated based on the increase from 2500 to 4400).
Comparing Solana, assuming 6% of the circulating supply is purchased in the future, and conservatively assuming Solana's on-market follow-up funds are smaller than ETH's (considering on-market funds have already entered the market in July and August), the potential increase is capped at at least 76%. If Galaxy's bullets have been used up, we conservatively estimate the increase to be halved, leaving at least 35% more room for future growth, corresponding to a Solana price of $324.
So at the 240 position, although external variables also include macroeconomic policies, emotional games, and on-site capital leverage, the potential buying volume is known and certain, and we still tend to be bullish.
- Then, using the same logic, let's look at the popular Pump:
According to the data from https://fees.pump.fun/, if the total repurchase amount of pumpfun from July 14 to September 14 is 497,660 sol, then the average repurchase amount per day is 7,902 sol, and the average daily repurchase amount is about 1.5M, which means that the repurchase rate has been completed by 6.574%.
It is known that the circulation of Pump before unlocking in July 26 is 43%. At this rate, 17.84% of the circulation can be completed this year.
This conclusion is based on the premise that Pump's profitability can be maintained, which is also the biggest difference from Sol's repurchase logic. So far, it is the on-site funds that are buying Pump.
So will the funds in the market continue to buy the pump? Or, to put it another way, can the pump continue to make profits?
(Finally, back to the business model analysis that VCs love to hear)
Let me start with the conclusion: I think it is sustainable in the short term.
Reason 1: The founder grasped the core of the business, he knew what business model to choose, and his judgment on the business model was undoubtedly verified.
The profits that Pumpfun brings to the anchors, especially the mid- and long-tail anchors, are more than 100 times that of traditional live streaming platforms such as Twitch, Ticktock, Instagram, etc. Countless live streaming guilds in Los Angeles, Kuala Lumpur, and HZ know how profitable it is. It is only a matter of time before they join pumpfun to form groups to increase their profits.
Pumpfun isn't aiming to attract top streamers on traditional platforms, but rather mid- to long-tail streamers who can't earn high returns on traditional platforms, as well as newcomers who haven't yet started streaming but have potential. The team even "recently spent approximately $500,000 to purchase a batch of 'streamer starter kits.' These include cameras, monitors, keyboards, mice, and other equipment to help newcomers get started with live streaming."
You can listen to the podcast of Delphi Digital interview, which is very informative. BTW, I think listening to podcasts is a very good way to understand the project team and the founder’s style (https://x.com/Delphi_Digital/status/1965123340802425163
Reason 2: There is still room for improvement in valuation.
Pump's current circulating market capitalization is 2.7B, with a total circulation of 7.7B and a 30-day revenue of 56M. In comparison, Hyperliquid has a circulating market capitalization of 14B, a total circulation of 53B, and a 30-day revenue of 94M.
Pump's circulating market capitalization/annual revenue = 4; Hyperliquid's circulating market capitalization/annual revenue = 12;
Of course, Pump's revenue is far less stable than Hyperliquid's. If the Pump coin price falls or the market cools down, its revenue will definitely decline faster than Hyperliquid's. But even so, if the current revenue is guaranteed to remain unchanged, it is expected that Pump's circulating market value will double.
A bigger imagination space can be compared with the live broadcast giant Twitch, which is now valued at approximately US$50 billion. Their simultaneous online viewers at any point in time are approximately between 70,000 and 90,000, and Pump's live broadcast peak can reach 3% to 5% of Twitch's user base. If calculated at 5%, Pump's market value should be 2.5B, which is the same as its current market value; but the daily active users of Pumpfun mobile phones have reached 35,000. If all of them can be converted into live broadcast users, it can be comparable to half of Twitch.
Of course, in addition to this, there may be buying of DAT in the future, but we will ignore this for now because the scale is not yet certain.
Mr. Mai has also written related articles on repurchase:
https://x.com/Michael_Liu93/status/1956623640289808425
- Finally, let’s talk about Cards:
The Cards (collectorcrypt) business belongs to the very mature offline card collection industry (collection and exchange of game cards), also known as game cards/TCG (Trading Card Game). The most famous in the TCG industry is The Pokémon Company. Official disclosures show that as of March 2025, the cumulative printing of Pokémon TCG has exceeded 75 billion cards. In the 2024 fiscal year (2024.4-2025.3), about 10.2 billion cards were printed, which is the ceiling level of the industry. The revenue of the entire TCG industry is also in the tens of billions of US dollars.
Cards' business is to RWA-ize Pokémon's physical cards and use the blockchain market to carry out the entire process of issuance, circulation and trading. Users can choose to buy card packs to draw cards. If they draw rare cards, they can sell them at high multiples (similar to the logic of blind boxes).
Cards' current 30-day revenue is $4.9 million, including $2.58 million in the last seven days, and transaction fees are as high as $8.12 million.
Cards revenue will flow into the treasury for future repurchases and dividends to Cards token holders
The current circulating market value is 67m, and the full circulating market value is 565m. According to the circulating market value/annual revenue = 1.13, it is significantly lower than the valuation ratio of Pumpfun and Hyperliquid.
Of course, Cards' low valuation premium is also because its business moat has not yet been formed. The revenue explosion of its business only started this week, and its sustainability still needs to be observed. Moreover, it has not yet formed its own advantages over similar competitors Courtyard and Phygitals.
I'll take a small gamble for now.
The order of these three is SOL>Pumpfun>Cards in terms of certainty. In terms of growth potential, I think Pumpfun is slightly higher than or equal to Cards and higher than Solana.
Regardless of the outcome of this week's Federal Reserve meeting, funds will begin to resume their deployment, and the priority will still be casino-like projects with cash flow (Hyperliquid, Pumpfun, Cards).
When vague narratives are unable to arouse FOMO, people will choose to believe in projects that actually generate profits, which is also a sign of progress for the industry.
