2024 has passed, summarizing the characteristics of the cryptocurrency market in 2024. While Bitcoin continues to break new highs, many altcoins have performed poorly, falling instead of rising, leading many to shout that there is no altcoin season, only a Bitcoin bull market.
When Bitcoin reaches $1 million, everyone will surely recall the year 2024, which will be recorded in the history of the cryptocurrency industry. Bitcoin has officially been approved for an ETF by the U.S. SEC, becoming one of the global assets that cannot go to zero, just like gold and silver. Now, with a price of $100,000 per coin, the market is filled with imagination about the future of cryptocurrency.
The first major event: the approval of the Bitcoin spot ETF.
On January 11, 2024, at 4 AM, the SEC approved 11 Bitcoin spot ETFs, including those from VanEck, Bitwise, Fidelity, Franklin, Valkyrie, Hashdex, Ark Invest, Grayscale, BlackRock, WisdomTree, and Invesco Galaxy. Six of the ETFs were listed on the Chicago Options Exchange, three on the New York Stock Exchange, and two on NASDAQ. After the good news was announced, Bitcoin's price experienced a period of decline due to Grayscale's selling, reaching its first historical high on March 13, 2024.
The second major event: Ordi peaks at the beginning of the year, and Bome ignites explosively.
The main representative of Bitcoin inscriptions is the Ordinals protocol, which is the BRC20 token. It tracks every satoshi's serial number in transactions by assigning them to Bitcoin, while users can add extra data such as images, videos, and text to the Bitcoin blockchain through Ordinals, making each satoshi unique, thus possessing NFT-like qualities.
Ordi is the first BRC20 token issued on the Bitcoin blockchain, with its most spectacular year being 2023, achieving a leap from zero to over a billion in market cap within a year, leading the trend of inscriptions. Entering 2024, Ordi's popularity continues to rise, setting a historical high of 97 USDT on March 5, with a market cap of $1.84 billion.
On March 14, 2024, the BOOK OF MEME issued by Pepe Meme artist Darkfarm surged 20 times within just three hours of listing, with a market cap exceeding $80 million. Bome is a permanent storage library for memes, which can be expanded with a series of meme creation features. On March 13, Darkfarm started a presale, allowing participation by sending SOL to designated Solana addresses. The presale's effects and the resulting popularity exceeded expectations, with a significant influx of buy orders over 100 SOL continuously pushing its price up; Bome peaked at a price of $0.0012, rising approximately 24 times, with a market cap exceeding $80 million.
The explosive rise of Bome ignited the first wave of enthusiasm in the 2024 meme coin market, and this meme heat began to spread to various public chains, marking the start of a meme carnival in 2024. At the same time, Bome innovatively adopted a presale model, launching a unique art show.
The third major event: Bitcoin network's mining rewards are halved.
On April 20, 2024, at 8:09 AM, Bitcoin successfully completed its fourth halving at block height 840,000, reducing the mining reward from 6.25 Bitcoins to 3.125 Bitcoins. The last halving occurred on May 11, 2020, and the next is expected in April 2028.
Bitcoin completed its four-year block halving, experiencing nearly a month of wide fluctuations before the halving. Contrary to many people's expectations of significant volatility post-halving, the price actually fell by 8% on the day of the fourth halving, which is inconsistent with the historical performance of a 22% average increase. In the following 125 days, 2024 also became the worst-performing period after halving.
In the long run, the supply shock brought about by halving will have an increasingly smaller impact on Bitcoin's price. The greater determining factor for Bitcoin's price in the future will shift towards structural changes on the demand side, rather than primarily relying on the supply contraction caused by halving.
The fourth major event: Ethereum spot ETF approved.
On May 24, 2024, at 5 AM, the SEC approved eight spot Ethereum ETFs at once, including those from BlackRock, Fidelity, Grayscale, Cathie Wood's ARK Investments, Invesco, VanEck, Bitwise, and Franklin Templeton.
The Ethereum spot ETF approval did not experience the same spectacular rise as the Bitcoin spot approval; the trend has remained relatively weak, facing criticism from insiders. As the leader of altcoins, the approval of the Ethereum spot ETF is significant, and insiders hope it will gain momentum in the later stages of the bull market.
From the perspective of Ethereum, the bellwether of the altcoin season, Ethereum has already surpassed the high of the March mini bull market in December. Although it was pulled down by Bitcoin again, this indicates that the progress of the altcoin season has reached a critical juncture. From the current market conditions, Ethereum may surpass its historical high before March 2025, and many other quality altcoins may follow suit and also exceed historical highs.
The fifth major event: the tenfold rise of the Hippo MooDeng has sparked a trend of internet celebrity animal memes.
In July 2024, lowercase neiro sounded the victory horn for the community. Neiro is inspired by a real-life Shiba Inu of the same name, known as the successor to Doge. On July 31, uppercase NEIRO was exposed by Bubblemaps as a conspiracy group just a week after its launch, while lowercase neiro became more community-driven. Initially, it was lukewarm until V God publicly expressed support and donated over $500,000 of neiro to an animal welfare fund, gradually increasing its price through the power of community promotion.
In early September, Binance's token listing announcement undoubtedly reignited the capitalization debate. Binance announced the listing of uppercase NEIRO and lowercase neiro just ten days apart. Eventually, the market cap of lowercase neiro surged rapidly, skyrocketing from $20 million to over $120 million within just a few hours, while the price of uppercase NEIRO quickly fell, dropping below $0.1 in just a few hours, with a daily maximum decline of over 50%.
After the initial project team abandoned the project, neiro was taken over by the community. Ultimately, the crypto community triumphed over the conspiracy group, and the victory of lowercase neiro marked the first official recognition of community power by Binance, demonstrating the strong potential of community autonomy. Through this battle, neiro became known as the first meme coin representing community spirit.
In September, Moo Deng led the trend of internet celebrity animal memes, relying on TikTok for viral spread. Cute and ugly-charming images have always been beloved by netizens and are a perpetual hot topic in the meme market. In September, a small hippo named Moo Deng became an internet sensation, making headlines across various media outlets. It was born in a Thai open zoo called Khao Kheow and quickly gained popularity on TikTok and Instagram due to its cute expressions and ugly-charming appearance.
Based on Moo Deng, the Meme coin launched on the Solana Pump.fun platform gained immense popularity and affection, with its market cap exceeding $100 million in just a few weeks. On November 15, after Binance announced the listing of the Moo Deng contract, this Meme coin surged over 100%.
Hippo Moo Deng has gained tremendous popularity in foreign communities, quickly attracting media attention. For the meme market, which is already enthusiastic about cats and dogs, cute animals are inherently suitable for speculation, and with the viral spread of platforms like TikTok and Instagram, it is even easier to become a phenomenon.
On November 11, Binance listed the meme coins PNUT and ACT spot, with both surging 330% and 1440% respectively within the day, reigniting the meme market.
The squirrel image of PNUT comes from a squirrel named 'Peanut' that was euthanized due to suspicion of carrying a virus. At that time, Dogecoin condemned the Democrats, and Musk expressed condolences for Peanut and claimed that Trump's presidency would save Peanut. Subsequently, a large number of user-generated content about Peanut began to emerge online. Since then, Peanut, based on internet celebrity animal memes, started to incorporate Trump-related political elements.
ACT Meme is a cryptocurrency that combines artificial intelligence technology with blockchain, aiming to create an ecosystem themed around AI and memes. ACT has faced multiple betrayals from developers, which has had a significant negative impact on its long-term development, but the community has never given up on building the ACT project.
The wealth miracle created by PNUT and ACT pushed market sentiment to a climax, prompting Binance to frantically list meme coins, subsequently launching tokens like HIPPO, DEGEN, BAN, SLERF, CHEEMS, WHY, CHILLGUY, etc., within a month. The meme market became unprecedentedly hot, with abundant liquidity flooding in, doubling the market cap of the entire meme coin market, which reached its peak value of $137.1 billion on December 9.
This round of meme narratives ranges from inscriptions, presales, crypto communities, internet celebrity animals, to AI memes and DeSci. Innovative gameplay and narratives have emerged one after another, achieving two qualitative leaps in market cap in March and November. It has also birthed tokens like BOME, SLERF, Neiro, MOODENG, PNUT, GOAT, RIF, etc., with the overall market cap of the meme market growing to five times that of the beginning of the year.
In the future, memes will inevitably become an indispensable piece of the entire Web3 ecosystem, continuing to create new myths. The meme trend is on the rise, and the future is promising.
The sixth major event: Trump is elected as the 47th President of the United States and makes ten friendly commitments to cryptocurrency.
On the afternoon of November 6, Republican presidential candidate Trump has secured the 270 electoral votes needed to be elected president in the 2024 U.S. election. Since 2024, Trump has changed his earlier negative stance on cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, continuously expressing support for crypto and making a series of commitments. Below are Trump's ten commitments to cryptocurrency.
The first thing is to make the United States the world capital of cryptocurrency.
The second commitment: to fire SEC Chairman Gensler.
The third commitment: to establish a strategic Bitcoin reserve.
The fourth commitment: to prevent the United States from selling its held Bitcoin.
The fifth commitment: to prevent the U.S. government from further developing a central digital currency.
The sixth commitment: to propose comprehensive cryptocurrency policies.
The seventh commitment: to stop the crackdown on cryptocurrency within one hour of taking office.
The eighth commitment: to terminate the illegal suppression of the cryptocurrency industry in the U.S.
The ninth commitment: to suggest using cryptocurrency to solve the U.S. debt problem.
The tenth commitment: to reduce the prison sentence of Silk Road founder Ulbricht.
The seventh major event: Bitcoin breaks through the psychological barrier of $100,000 for investors.
On December 5, 2024, at 10:34 AM, Bitcoin broke through the $100,000 mark. Bitcoin continued to surge, and the long-awaited six figures finally arrived, leading the market to celebrate again. The most common phrase seen that day was, 'The good news is that Bitcoin has broken $100,000; the bad news is that the retail investors didn't make any money.'
In 2024, during Trump's efforts to gain support from the crypto industry, Bitcoin's price closely linked to Trump's election odds. After Trump confirmed his victory, Bitcoin's price surged to $99,500, just a step away from six figures. Bitcoin broke the $100,000 mark again, pushing its market cap close to $2 trillion, making it second only to Apple, Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google parent company Alphabet in the market cap ranking of U.S. companies.
The change in Bitcoin's market share has always been an important indicator for observing the dynamics of the cryptocurrency industry. In 2024, Bitcoin's market share rose from the beginning of the year to 61%. Meanwhile, investors lament that not many assets outperformed Bitcoin this year, and the price performance of altcoins has made it difficult for insiders to operate in this cycle.
Bitcoin's market cap grew by 141% in 2024, soaring from $828 billion to $1.98 trillion; Ethereum's market cap grew by 72%, rising from $274 billion to $473 billion; the market cap of other altcoins grew by 129% in 2024, from $389 billion to $886 billion, largely thanks to the strong performances of Solana and meme coins, with only two coins in the top 100 altcoins outperforming Bitcoin.
Looking back at this year, Bitcoin has completed a capital relay race driven by Wall Street and policy, redefining its status as a global financial asset by breaking through the $100,000 mark. However, this is not just a price breakthrough; it is a profound transformation of market structure, capital flow, and asset perception. The ETF wave of Bitcoin and the market led by institutions are pushing this decentralized asset towards a broader mainstream stage, while also making it more complex and sensitive under macro variables.
From the diminishing marginal effects of halving to the boost of Trump's policies, Bitcoin in 2024 has demonstrated not only its mastery of cycles but also its ability to integrate into the global financial system. Currently, the market may still be entangled in issues of liquidity concentration and the absence of altcoins, but in the long run, Bitcoin is evolving towards a more resilient and widely recognized global store of value.
In a golden window period with regulatory agencies loosening restrictions, the cryptocurrency market is set to welcome an unprecedented 2025 Trump bull market. Not only has Trump become the first Bitcoin president of the United States, but Congress is also filled with pro-crypto officials. After Trump won the election, many industry insiders began to hold an optimistic view towards clearer and more supportive regulatory policies for the future of the industry.
In 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025, this cycle has reached its fourth year, with the first three years laying the groundwork for the last year's harvest. By convention, a bull market will arrive as expected. Wishing all traders big profits in 2025.
