The first half of 2024 marked a pivotal period for the cryptocurrency and blockchain ecosystem, characterized by technological breakthroughs, regulatory milestones, and expanding investment in next-generation Web3 infrastructure. HTX Ventures, as a leading global investor in blockchain innovation, has strategically positioned itself at the forefront of this evolution, backing transformative projects across core sectors that are shaping the future of decentralized technology.
“HTX Ventures achieved strong momentum in the first half of 2024. We actively pursued investment opportunities in projects that strengthen critical ecosystems, enhance user experience, and build foundational infrastructure—elements we believe are essential for the long-term success of Web3,” said a managing partner at HTX Ventures. “Despite market fluctuations, we remain confident in the second half of the year. By adhering to a long-term strategy and supporting frontier development, we’re witnessing a positive flywheel effect from successful business models and ecosystems. This momentum will inspire entrepreneurs and drive innovation across the entire space.”
Market Landscape in 2024
Macroeconomic Drivers
The crypto market experienced significant upward momentum since late 2023, fueled by institutional adoption and regulatory clarity. The approval of Bitcoin ETFs in early 2024 opened the floodgates for traditional finance, injecting substantial liquidity and stabilizing Bitcoin’s price between $60,000 and $70,000—up from an average of $40,000. Similarly, the greenlighting of Ethereum ETFs by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) marked the dawn of the ETF era for crypto, lowering entry barriers for retail and institutional investors alike.
However, this integration with traditional markets brings new dynamics. As crypto increasingly behaves like a risk asset, its price movements are becoming more correlated with equities and bonds—making it more susceptible to Wall Street sentiment and macroeconomic shifts.
👉 Discover how market cycles shape blockchain innovation and where smart capital is flowing next.
The Federal Reserve’s monetary policy remains a key influence. With cautious stance on rate cuts, the June 2024 FOMC projections suggest only one to one-and-a-half cuts (around 25 basis points) this year, and about 100 basis points expected in 2025. While lower rates imply looser liquidity, overall monetary expansion remains limited—potentially leading to liquidity fragmentation, where capital flows unevenly across asset classes, including crypto.
Mid-Year Market Correction: Context and Outlook
The global sell-off in early August 2024—sparked by Japan’s interest rate hike and weakening U.S. employment and earnings data—triggered a risk-off environment. Investors fled to safe-haven assets amid fears of economic slowdown. However, current indicators do not confirm an actual recession. Upcoming data releases—such as CPI, PCE, ISM indices, and PMI—will provide clearer signals about the economy’s trajectory.
Markets have priced in aggressive rate cuts (around 100 bps by year-end), but the Fed is unlikely to act before September unless new data forces a pivot. Political uncertainty from the upcoming U.S. election adds another layer of complexity.
Given this backdrop, HTX Ventures advises investors to avoid emotional decisions: neither panic-selling nor FOMO-driven buying. Instead, this period presents an opportunity to identify undervalued projects with solid fundamentals. Maintaining moderate exposure without leverage—and continuously updating views based on incoming data—is the prudent path forward.
Technological Advancements
On the technical front, key developments are laying the groundwork for mass adoption:
- The Ethereum Dencun upgrade significantly improved scalability for Layer 2 networks via proto-danksharding, reducing transaction costs and enhancing usability.
- EigenLayer introduced a novel restaking model, enabling Ethereum’s security to be reused across other protocols—a paradigm shift in decentralized trust.
- The convergence of AI agents and blockchain is unlocking autonomous services with transparent execution, setting the stage for intelligent, self-operating Web3 applications.
Core Investment Themes: 6 Strategic Directions
In H1 2024, HTX Ventures completed 23 strategic investments across infrastructure, DeFi, Bitcoin ecosystem (BTCFi), AI, DePIN, and SocialFi, with a strong emphasis on foundational layers and developer tools. We are particularly encouraged by the growing synergy between seasoned Web3 builders and Web2 talent focused on solving real user needs.
Looking ahead, three overarching themes will drive value creation:
- BTCFi: Unlocking Bitcoin’s Trapped Value
- Multichain Infrastructure: Bridging Fragmented Ecosystems
- User Experience Innovation: Bringing Web3 to the Masses
Let’s explore each in detail.
1. BTCFi: Unlocking Value in Bitcoin’s Security and Liquidity
Bitcoin remains the most secure and decentralized blockchain, yet its lack of native smart contract functionality has limited its utility beyond "digital gold." Most BTC holders cannot access DeFi services like lending, yield generation, or decentralized trading.
Despite innovations like Ordinals and Runes, which demonstrated demand for Bitcoin-based applications, the DeFi potential of Bitcoin remains vastly underutilized. Current Total Value Locked (TVL) in BTCFi stands at ~$1.2 billion—just **0.09%** of Bitcoin’s $13 trillion market cap. In contrast:
- Ethereum: 14% TVL-to-market-cap ratio
- Solana: 6%
- Ton: ~3%
Even at a conservative 1% ratio, BTCFi has 10x growth potential.
HTX Ventures is focusing on Bitcoin layer expansion solutions and token staking protocols that unlock flexibility for BTC holders and transform passive holdings into productive assets.
Babylon
Inspired by EigenLayer, Babylon enables Proof-of-Stake (PoS) chains to leverage Bitcoin’s security by accepting BTC as staked collateral. Its modular architecture supports restaking across blockchains, rollups, data availability layers, and oracles.
Unlike EigenLayer (which operates on Ethereum), Babylon activates Bitcoin as a foundational security layer—potentially catalyzing a wave of new BTC-native DeFi projects. The emergence of Liquid Restaking Tokens (LRTs) like StakeStone, Uniport, and Lorenzo signals growing momentum in this space.
👉 See how restaking is redefining trust and capital efficiency in decentralized networks.
BounceBit
A regulated centralized BTC restaking infrastructure, BounceBit offers a dual-token PoS Layer 1 where validators stake both BTC and native $BB tokens. Fully EVM-compatible, it supports secure cross-chain bridges and oracles through a hybrid CeFi+DeFi model—enabling Bitcoin holders to earn yield across multiple chains with strong custody via Mainnet Digital and Ceffu.
COREx
Built on Core, a Bitcoin-secured EVM-compatible chain, COREx is a V3-style decentralized exchange designed as the liquidity gateway for the BTCFi ecosystem. With intuitive design, low learning curve, AI-powered trading insights, and robust social features, COREx exemplifies how user-centric design can accelerate Web3 adoption.
2. Multichain Infrastructure: Building the Unified Web3 Backbone
The fragmentation of blockchain ecosystems has long hindered interoperability and capital efficiency. While Ethereum dominates in liquidity and developer activity, high fees and congestion limit scalability. Most alternative Layer 1s struggle with low user engagement due to poor connectivity.
The next wave of innovation lies in multichain-native infrastructure—platforms that integrate seamlessly across chains while solving specific bottlenecks like throughput, data availability, or liquidity fragmentation.
Monad
A high-performance EVM-equivalent Layer 1, Monad achieves over 10,000 TPS with 1-second block finality while maintaining full compatibility with Ethereum tooling and smart contracts. By combining Ethereum’s ecosystem strength with Solana-like speed, Monad enables scalable dApps without sacrificing decentralization or developer experience.
Avail
Addressing rollup fragmentation, Avail provides a unified data availability (DA) layer using Ethereum’s danksharding tech stack—KZG commitments and Data Availability Sampling (DAS). Avail Nexus enables permissionless interoperability via proof aggregation, while Avail Fusion enhances security through multi-asset staking.
As one of the fastest and most cost-effective DA solutions, Avail is poised to become the backbone for modular blockchains.
Berachain
This CosmosSDK-based EVM chain introduces Proof of Liquidity (PoL)—a novel consensus mechanism where validators stake whitelisted assets (e.g., BTC, ETH, stablecoins) to earn rewards from DeFi protocol revenues and native $BERA tokens. This incentivizes deep liquidity provisioning directly into on-chain protocols.
Sophon
A zkSync-based "superchain" built using ZK Stack, Sophon targets the entertainment sector—gaming, music, art, ticketing—with a high-performance modular L2. By leveraging Ethereum for settlement and a yet-to-be-announced DA layer, Sophon delivers low fees and high throughput tailored for mass-market digital experiences.
3. User Experience Innovation: Making Web3 Accessible
Technology alone isn’t enough—adoption hinges on seamless user experience. Drawing inspiration from Apple’s design philosophy, HTX Ventures prioritizes projects that blend cutting-edge tech with intuitive interfaces.
We’re investing in platforms that onboard users through familiar contexts: social interaction, fandoms, gaming, and content creation.
Camp Network
A modular L2 focused on culture and entertainment (music, film, sports), Camp uses a “digital backpack” to import offline engagement data into Web3 apps—helping developers understand and reward meaningful user behavior.
Tomo
An all-in-one Web3 social app, Tomo turns online presence into a universal social wallet. It enables spam-free connections with creators, private discussions, and discovery of digital art via Tomoji emojis—all embedded with financial incentives that redistribute value fairly between creators and audiences.
Theoriq
This AI agent platform promotes decentralized AI governance, offering a composable infrastructure where AI agents operate transparently within Web3 frameworks. Theoriq introduces a Web3-native consumer layer and open AI marketplace—democratizing access to AI while ensuring execution integrity through cryptographic proofs and reputation systems.
Its vision includes a global GPU resource-sharing economy powered by token incentives—addressing AI’s compute shortage sustainably.
Emerging Trends to Watch
4. Application-Focused Infrastructure: FHE & AI
Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE)
FHE enables computation on encrypted data—ideal for privacy-preserving transactions and AI inference. Unlike ZK-proofs or mixers, FHE is natively compatible with smart contracts and EVM. With rising regulatory scrutiny on AI data privacy (especially in the U.S.), FHE offers a compliant path forward.
Projects like Fhenix and ZAMA are pioneering FHE adoption through hardware acceleration to overcome performance hurdles.
AI Agent Economy
As highlighted by Vitalik Buterin, AI agents represent the next frontier—autonomous entities capable of perception, reasoning, and action. When integrated with blockchain incentives via tokenomics, they can perform tasks like data labeling, content moderation, or decentralized compute provisioning.
The rise of Initial Model Offerings (IMO) could revolutionize open-source AI funding by allowing developers to monetize trained models directly—creating sustainable ecosystems beyond speculative ICOs.
5. Next-Gen SocialFi & Community Platforms
HTX Ventures sees strong potential in community-driven ecosystems:
- Farcaster: Decentralized social graph with memecoin economics
- TON: Backed by major investments and technical depth in SocialFi/Gaming
- Solana Blinks: On-chain actions embedded in social content
- FriendTech: Creator monetization via social tokens
These platforms are becoming launchpads for SocialFi and GameFi innovations with built-in user bases.
6. DePIN: Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks
DePIN leverages blockchain incentives to build real-world infrastructure—from wireless networks to sensor grids—using crowdsourced resources. By integrating privacy tech (like ZKPs) and AI analytics, platforms on chains like Solana are creating efficient, cost-effective alternatives to centralized providers—with compelling economic returns.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What is BTCFi?
A: BTCFi refers to decentralized financial applications built around Bitcoin—enabling services like lending, staking, and trading while leveraging Bitcoin’s security.
Q: Why invest in multichain infrastructure?
A: As blockchain ecosystems grow more fragmented, interoperable infrastructure becomes critical for capital efficiency, scalability, and user experience.
Q: How does AI integrate with blockchain?
A: Blockchain provides transparency and incentive alignment for AI systems—enabling decentralized training data markets, verifiable inference (via ZKML), and autonomous AI agents governed by code.
Q: What makes FHE important for crypto?
A: FHE allows private computation on-chain without revealing inputs—ideal for confidential DeFi trades or protecting sensitive AI training data while complying with regulations.
Q: Is now a good time to invest in crypto?
A: Despite volatility, macro trends—ETF approvals, Fed easing expectations—are favorable long-term. Focus on fundamentals over price swings.
Q: How does HTX Ventures support portfolio companies?
A: Through strategic guidance, fundraising support, ecosystem connections, and access to HTX’s global platform—including potential listing opportunities.
Core Keywords: BTCFi, multichain infrastructure, Web3 user experience, AI agents in blockchain, decentralized physical infrastructure (DePIN), fully homomorphic encryption (FHE), SocialFi innovation