Source: Bankless
Author: Golem (@web3_golem)
In October, the price of Bitcoin started with a downward trend, falling to around $59,000. However, in recent days, the price of Bitcoin has rebounded well, reaching a high of around $68,422 yesterday. So with the overall market trending positively, how will the altcoins perform in October?
The Bankless analysis team made predictions on the price trends of 10 altcoins around October, with 5 tokens bullish and bearish respectively. This article will sort out the predictions and reasons of the Bankless analyst team, and summarize its previous predictions for tokens due in October for readers' reference.
10-month expiration prediction success rate: 70%
Excluding the neutral tokens, there are 10 tokens predicted by the Bankless analysis team that will expire in October. The prediction results are as follows:
Bullish forecast but downside: Instadapp (INST) down 43%;
Forecast bearish but up: Maple Finance (MPL) up 43.56%, BNB Chain (BNB) up 2%;
The predicted bearish trend is consistent with the actual decline: Ondo Finance (ONDO) fell 25.28%, Livepeer (LPT) fell 27%, ETH Name Service (ENS) fell 36.71%, Celestia (TIA) fell 1%, Polkadot (DOT) fell 36.46%, ether.fi (ETHFI) fell 40%, and Worldcoin (WLD) fell 26.07%.
Among them, Instadapp (INST) and Maple Finance (MPL) are the most seriously counter-attacked, and ether.fi (ETHFI) is predicted to have higher returns. However, the overall winning rate of tokens predicted to expire in October is still 70%.
Bullish Tokens
dYdX（DYDX）
Track: DeFi
Reason: Launching the US election prediction market may increase the DYDX staking yield
Forecast period: October 16, 2024 to January 16, 2025
Predicted price: $0.96
Forecasted price performance so far: Up 1.28%
DYDX has fallen 26% since the Bankless analyst team turned bearish on July 23 due to concerns about a decline in dYdX usage indicators. But now, a bullish catalyst has emerged, with dYdX’s recently launched “TRUMPWIN-USD” trading market, which will allow traders to go long or short on Trump’s election as US president with up to 20x leverage.
While extreme volatility in prediction markets may require forced deleveraging or closing of winning positions to prevent market insolvency prior to event settlement, it is undeniable that the extreme leverage offered by these contracts is bound to attract a large number of speculators. Despite the product’s recent launch, competitive prediction market Polymarket has already doubled its monthly figures due to a surge in demand for presidential prediction markets; a trend that will almost certainly accelerate as the US election approaches.
DYDX staker yields are positively correlated with the growing demand for the dYdX perpetual contract market. Considering that the leveraged US President prediction market could be a compelling product, staker yields could increase in the coming weeks, driving up the token price.
Jupiter(JUP)
Track: DeFi
Reason: Grayscale is optimistic, and the product has a high degree of fit with the market
Forecast period: October 15, 2024 to January 15, 2025
Predicted price: $0.88
Forecasted price performance to date: Down 3.66%
On October 10, Grayscale added JUP to its list of “assets under consideration,” marking the token as a candidate for possible inclusion in future investment products.
Jupiter is a full-service exchange deployed on Solana. Its core product is a DEX aggregator that automatically routes users’ trades to a pool of the best execution prices. While Jupiter does not currently charge swap fees, and its swap smart contracts do hold assets, the exchange processes hundreds of millions of dollars in spot token swaps every day and could easily monetize its order flow at some point in the future.
Although Jupiter’s fully diluted valuation is $9 billion, 15% higher than Uniswap. This valuation difference may be due to Jupiter’s complementary products, such as extremely high leverage perpetual futures (yielding up to 28% on $700 million in liquidity) and a strong token launch platform.
Thala (THL)
Track: DeFi
Reason: Aptos is the leading ecological protocol and can gain ecological development dividends
Forecast period: October 7, 2024 to January 7, 2025
Predicted price: $0.51
Forecasted price performance to date: Up 6.14%
While Aptos has not received attention due to continued poor performance throughout 2024, there is hope that APT could be the next beneficiary of the L1 boom, while the ecosystem has been healthy since mid-September.
Thala (THL), a comprehensive DeFi application providing token swaps, liquidity staking, and over-collateralized stablecoins, is the largest investable application and third-largest protocol by TVL on the Aptos Network.
Thala is built using Move, a programming language unique to networks such as Aptos and Sui, and while there are competitors on both chains, the protocol’s market share is not encroached by mature EVM alternatives such as Uniswap. In addition, Thala is technically deployable on Move-based networks such as Movement.
Apartments（APT）
Track: L1
Reason: Good fundamentals
Forecast period: October 4, 2024 to January 4, 2025
Predicted price: $9.13
Forecasted currency price performance to date: Up 9.97%
Aptos has been underperforming since the beginning of 2023, but the token has recovered after experiencing a low in August and doubled in the two months prior to this analysis.
Although Aptos’ application scenarios are still immature and its valuation is much higher than Ethereum, Aptos’ on-chain fundamentals seem to be positive. With the steady increase in the number of daily active addresses, the TVL indicator has also reached a historical high.
With a theoretical maximum throughput of 160,000 transactions per second (TPS), Aptos is one of the fastest blockchains in the crypto space, a feature that makes it ideally suited for the bandwidth required by high-performance applications in emerging crypto space such as DePIN.
Axles（AXL）
Track: Infrastructure
Reason: Launching new cross-chain functions can take advantage of the recent prosperity of the L1 network
Forecast period: October 3, 2024 to January 3, 2025
Predicted price: $0.65
Forecasted price performance to date: Up 23.15%
Launched on October 3, Axelar’s Mobius Development Stack (MDS) is the latest cross-chain interoperability standard leveraging the AXL token, providing a set of open tools and protocols that its developers claim will “unlock an entirely new full-chain design space and bring new dimensions to building in Web3.”
With Axelar’s Interchain Amplifier, bridge connections between new chains can be easily created at the smart contract level without major protocol changes, making the new interoperability standard support Flow, Hedera, Solana, Stacks, Stellar, Sui, and XRP Ledger by default.
While AXL tokens retain utility under MDS and can be bonded as collateral by network validators to process transactions, the structure also allows for revalidation using ETH or BTC collateral for enhanced security guarantees.
The Bankless analyst team is bullish on AXL’s token performance, believing that the interoperability token is well-positioned to ride on the recent outperformance of L1 tokens, which could accelerate increased network exploration and bridging activity.
Bearish Tokens
Uniswap（UNI）
Track: DeFi
Reason: Bridging is still required, and the swap experience may be bad
Forecast period: October 10, 2024 to January 10, 2025
Predicted price: $8.35
Forecasted price performance to date: Down 9.1%
On October 10, Uniswap launched Unichain, a general-purpose rollup built on the OP Stack, with the goal of becoming a liquidity hub for cryptocurrencies and solving the inevitable liquidity fragmentation problem created by Ethereum’s rollup-centric roadmap.
The network intends to utilize a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) secured by UNI validators who provide fast pre-confirmations and earn network fees for their services, while reducing user transaction wait times fourfold from 1 second to 200-250 milliseconds and enabling the long-awaited use of the UNI token as a network gas consumption token.
However, Unichain swaps still require time-consuming bridge transactions, although OP Stack’s native interoperability is expected to significantly reduce OP Stack’s internal chain bridge waiting time and transaction costs.
The Bankless analyst team is bearish on UNI’s price because despite Unichain’s grand plans for an interoperable future and the power it provides to UNI, the need for a bridge fundamentally creates a worse swap experience. Since profit-sensitive on-chain traders are unlikely to default to Unichain for worse execution and longer wait times, it’s hard to imagine what this experiment will lead to other than increased liquidity fragmentation and worse trade execution.
Wormhole（W）
Track: Infrastructure
Reason: The new airdrop incentives are not very attractive, the trading volume is declining, and the market is unable to absorb future token unlocking
Forecast period: October 2, 2024 to January 2, 2025
Predicted price: $0.36
Predicted price performance to date: Down 17.48%
In August, the Bankless analyst team was bearish on the performance of the W token. It remains to be seen whether Wormhole’s new airdrop campaign can incentivize adoption of the token, and the market may have difficulty absorbing future token supply.
While the token price rose throughout the month in tandem with the strength of the overall crypto market, Wormhole trading volume plummeted 36% ($255 million) from August to September, and the token price saw a significant surge in the days after BlackRock’s blockchain infrastructure partner on BUIDL, Securitize, announced it would leverage Wormhole to provide cross-chain capabilities for its tokenized asset products.
Meanwhile, South Korean exchange Upbit also listed the W trading pair on October 2, causing the token price to immediately surge by 30%, and the price trend began to reverse shortly after trading went live.
The Bankless analyst team remains bearish on W in October, skeptical about the benefits of the future Wormhole airdrop incentive program, doubtful that high-profile partnership announcements can reverse declining trading volumes, and believing that the FOMO caused by Upbit's listing will be fleeting.
OwnLayer（OWN）
Track: Infrastructure
Reason: The token is overvalued, and the actual rate of return of AVS may not be good
Forecast period: October 1, 2024 to January 1, 2025
Predicted price: 4 USD
Forecasted price performance to date: Down 16%
At the time of analysis, EIGEN was trading at a market cap of $740 million, with a fully diluted valuation of nearly $6.7 billion. Although restaking has been touted as the future of cryptoeconomic security, EigenLayer’s high valuation may be difficult to justify in the coming months.
From a fundamental perspective, EigenLayer and its applications are bound to be valued for their ability to generate revenue; while these numbers cannot be determined without live AVS, the profit prospects of the entire EigenLayer ecosystem are also questionable.
Even in the most optimistic scenario, leading AVS may only generate a few percentage points of real yield. Crypto investors will need to absorb the token inflation rate used to subsidize low returns, an inherently unsustainable balance, especially for new services with little or no live integration.
ether.fi（ETHFI）
Track: LST
Reason: The token is overvalued and the market cannot afford the subsequent massive explanation
Forecast period: September 30, 2024 to December 30, 2024
Predicted price: $1.82
Forecasted price performance to date: Down 8.24%
In July, the Bankless analyst team turned bearish on ETHFI, predicting that TVL outflows will be used to chase other airdrop opportunities and distribute more tokens, which will weaken the growth hopes supporting ether.fi's high valuation and cause the token price to fall.
But rather than losing market share and TVL to competitors, ether.fi has successfully increased its deposits by creating novel re-collateralized tokens and an ongoing airdrop program, though its perpetual token issuance policy has had a clear negative impact on price. The ETHFI team and investor unlocking is scheduled to begin on March 17 next year, an event that will surely attract the attention of many holders in 2025, and while airdrop incentives have proven successful in retaining deposits, ether.fi is trading at a higher fully diluted valuation than Lido.
The Bankless analyst team remains bearish on ETHFI prices, believing that the market will have difficulty absorbing its continued airdrop issuance given the token’s extremely overvalued nature relative to LDO.
ether.fi（ETHFI）
Track: LST
Reason: The token is overvalued and the market cannot bear the subsequent massive explanation
Forecast period: September 30, 2024 to December 30, 2024
Predicted price: $1.82
Forecasted price performance to date: Down 8.24%
In July, the Bankless analyst team turned bearish on ETHFI, predicting that TVL outflows will be used to chase other airdrop opportunities and distribute more tokens, which will weaken the growth hopes supporting ether.fi's high valuation and cause the token price to fall.
But rather than losing market share and TVL to competitors, ether.fi has successfully increased its deposits by creating novel re-collateralized tokens and an ongoing airdrop program, though its perpetual token issuance policy has had a clear negative impact on price. The ETHFI team and investor unlocking is scheduled to begin on March 17 next year, an event that will surely attract the attention of many holders in 2025, and while airdrop incentives have proven successful in retaining deposits, ether.fi is trading at a higher fully diluted valuation than Lido.
The Bankless analyst team remains bearish on ETHFI prices, believing that the market will have difficulty absorbing its continued airdrop issuance given the token’s extremely overvalued nature relative to LDO.
Solana（SUN）
Track: L1
Reason: The ecosystem is stagnant and performance may not be as good as other L1
Forecast period: September 26, 2024 to December 26, 2024
Predicted price: $156.15
Forecasted price performance so far: down 1.84%
On June 21, the Bankless analyst team began to be bearish on SOL, predicting that the growing disillusionment with the ecosystem's meme coins will lead to its poor performance in the coming months.
While in retrospect, the timing of this prediction was poor as it was issued just days before SOL rebounded from its range low, a level it remained at in the ensuing months despite multiple retests, during which time there was noticeable ecosystem apathy.
Solana’s TVL has been stagnant since the overall crypto market peaked in March. Network fee revenue has been trending downward, and while its native token has outperformed established meme tokens (i.e. BONK and WIF) in recent months, it’s also a risk-off signal that the ecosystem’s golden age may be over. For a token that’s premised on investor outperformance, this is a worrying prospect.
The Bankless analyst team remains bearish on Solana, believing that the relative attractiveness of other L1s will increase in the foreseeable future, thereby undermining investor confidence in the Solana narrative.
