With the good news of the Federal Reserve's 50 basis point rate cut, the cryptocurrency market showed an overall upward trend. Investor sentiment quickly turned from panic and hesitation to optimism. At the same time, a series of institutional investors also released positive signals.
A recent Citibank report pointed out that the number of family offices that are optimistic about Web3 assets has surged from 8% last year to 17% this year. This data reflects that the willingness of large funds to enter the market has increased significantly, which is good for the market in the long term.
At the same time, Grayscale disclosed in its latest report the top 20 cryptocurrencies that are expected to rise sharply by the end of 2024, which has attracted widespread attention from institutional investors. Although Grayscale reminds that these assets are still highly volatile and not suitable for ordinary investors, their reference value cannot be ignored.
The following is an overview of these assets compiled by "Coin World" for readers. It is for reference only and does not constitute any investment advice:
1. Bitcoin: Since the FTX incident at the end of 2022, investors who have invested in Bitcoin have made considerable profits. As the king of mainstream cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin's dominance in this bull market has not decreased but increased. If the United States cuts interest rates again at the end of the year, the trend of Bitcoin may be more optimistic.
2. Ethereum: In this round of market, the price of Ethereum has been mediocre. Even if the United States passes the Ethereum spot ETF, which is a major positive, its pull-up effect is minimal. Can Ethereum withstand the impact of new public chains such as Solana in the future? We will wait and see, and I believe that Grayscale's judgment is supported by its professional analysis.
3. Solana: Affected by the collapse of FTX, Solana fell to its lowest point in history and was once labeled as "dead". However, in 2023, Solana revived its fundamentals through efficient operations. In early 2024, Solana led the Meme coin market and consolidated its leading position in the new public chain. In the long run, Solana deserves continued attention.
4. TON: Telegram, a global social software with 900 million monthly active users, is highly favored by Web3 users and is regarded as a DAO organization carrier and daily communication tool. The TON public chain it launched has obvious advantages in the industry. It is worth noting that the mini-game ecosystem on the TON chain is expected to become the growth engine of this round of bull market, and its potential value can be seen from the data of past representative projects.
5. Chainlink: As an old project in the Web3 world, Chainlink has not had a strong presence in the past two years, but its technical solutions are crucial to the implementation and promotion of the Web3 industry. If Chainlink's cross-chain interoperability protocol can be widely used with the help of this round of bull market, the price space of its token may rise accordingly.
6. NEAR: The NEAR public chain is known for its sharding technology, which has achieved high concurrency and fast transactions in the early stage. The recent major technological breakthrough is chain abstraction, which is expected to solve the problem of fragmented liquidity on the chain, realize intensive transactions, and efficiently complete value interaction, which is beneficial to the liquidity of the entire industry. If the NEAR ecosystem prospers and develops, its token price is expected to hit a new high.
7. Uniswap: As the leader of the DeFi wave in 2020, Uniswap performed well in the last bull market. As users' demand for DEX transactions increases, the scope of Uniswap's application continues to expand. It is worth noting that the Uniswap team continues to work hard to reduce fees and optimize functions, providing greater room for imagination for UNI prices.
8. Sui: Sui’s recent market performance has been highly praised, and some believe that its trend replicates SOL in the last bull market. However, judging from key indicators such as transaction volume and number of users, there is still a significant gap between Sui and Solana. As a leader among Meta (formerly Facebook) public chains, Grayscale’s optimism about Sui may be based more on its growth potential.
9. Bittensor: As a decentralized machine learning protocol, Bittensor was launched before 2021, focusing on the concept of Web3+AI, and is not a temporary project to take advantage of the trend. Although it is still unknown whether Bittensor's technical vision can be realized (this is a common challenge faced by the industry), its highlights lie in the token model (very similar to Bitcoin) and the consensus mechanism (evaluating the contribution of validators based on the amount of intelligent computing tasks).
10. Stacks: Stacks is regarded as the L2 network of the Bitcoin ecosystem and was launched as early as 2017. It was not until the inscription craze at the end of last year that the industry realized the importance of the second-layer network of Bitcoin. As the infrastructure of this new field, the importance of Stacks is self-evident. In early October, Stacks will complete the Nakamoto upgrade. Officials said that this round of upgrades will greatly improve the system speed and performance. If the upgrade is successful, the Bitcoin Finance (BTCFi) sector may usher in a period of explosive growth.
11. Aave: As the leader of lending tools in the DeFi ecosystem, Aave's price and total locked value (TVL) both soared after the U.S. announced a rate cut. In the loose environment of the bull market, many users tend to lend or deposit assets to maximize their personal returns, and Aave's opportunities are hidden there.
12. Optimism: As a leader in Ethereum L2 projects, Optimism performed well in the last bull market. However, affected by the sluggish Ethereum market, Optimism also fell into a weak period. Fortunately, Optimism is strengthening its interaction with new public chains such as Base to take advantage of the industry's development. As the Ethereum ecosystem recovers, Optimism may usher in more opportunities.
13. Arweave: Blockchain + cloud computing + data storage has great application value. Filecoin caused heated discussions in the last bull market. Can Arweave replicate the success of Filecoin in this round of market? At present, all indicators of Arweave ecology are on the rise. In the future, it needs to deal with challenges from BNB GreenField, which has strong ecological support from Binance.
14. MakerDAO (SKY): As a decentralized financial autonomous organization, MakerDAO is famous for its algorithmic stablecoin DAI. Although the adoption rate of DAI is not as high as that of centralized stablecoins, it has always been the spiritual sustenance of those who pursue decentralization. Recently, MakerDAO completed its brand upgrade and made major adjustments in product and technology strategies, which was questioned as deviating from the original intention of decentralization. However, judging from the data performance after the upgrade, the renewed SKY shows stronger development potential.
15. Helium: Is a decentralized IoT ecosystem feasible? Helium, founded in 2013, has been answering this question with practice. As the concept of DePIN cools down, Helium's narrative is gradually being ignored by the market. However, as a professional investment institution, Grayscale attaches more importance to the technical vision depicted by DePIN. After all, the current bull market in the US stock market is mainly driven by the concept of AI.
16. Lido DAO: Ethereum liquidity staking has a large room for growth. Backed by the big tree of Ethereum, Lido DAO benefits from the continued growth of Ethereum TVL. Of course, Lido itself also needs to deal with potential regulatory risks. In addition, if Lido can continuously improve the staking yield and simplify the operation process on the basis of improving cross-chain interoperability, it is believed that it will attract more new users.
17. Akash Network: As an on-chain cloud computing project, Akash Network supports users to trade idle computing resources. Akash Network is built on Cosmos. If the Cosmos public chain achieves a major breakthrough this round, Akash Network may grow strongly.
18. Aerodrome: Aerodrome is the leading DEX on the Base chain, and its status is equivalent to that of Uniswap on Ethereum. Currently, Aerodrome’s TVL and trading volume are growing rapidly, thanks to the strong performance of the Base public chain.
19. Celo: Celo is a new public chain with Web3 payment as its core, which was launched as early as 2020. From the actual situation, the demand in this bull market can support the positioning of this product. Celo is committed to enabling people in economically backward countries to enjoy Web3 financial services through mobile networks when they lack financial services or even cannot open bank accounts. It is worth noting that the number of daily active addresses of Celo's stablecoin has recently exceeded that of the TRON public chain, and its potential is promising.
20. UMA Protocol: This is a decentralized financial product protocol that has made achievements in oracle quotation services. Currently, UMA is focusing on developing the market potential of Base, which indirectly reflects the popularity of Base. From the value flow of Aerodrome and UMA between Ethereum and Base chains, it can be seen that capital is vigorously promoting the transfer of funds on the Ethereum chain to the Base chain.
The above are representative assets that Grayscale is optimistic about. Ordinary investors should carefully consider them based on their personal preferences and risk tolerance. It is worth noting that the investment logic of leading institutions such as Grayscale is often quite different from that of ordinary investors, so readers do not have to limit themselves to the above assets. In the ever-changing crypto asset market, any information is for reference only, and the final trading performance of investors depends on personal judgment and strategy.
