Many old players and investors in this cycle feel that the bull market in 2024 will be very different from that in 2021. The difficulty lies in the lack of original narrative creation, the lack of new investors, the huge amount of high FDV projects entering the market, and the lack of Mass Adaptation that has been on my mind for many years...
However, as Dickens said, “It is the best of times, it is the worst of times.” The answer to the wealth code is often written on the puzzle.
Copy Trump's bull market
The moment Bitcoin passed the ETF, crypto assets became a Western-dominated market. Almost all the major positives and narrative innovations in this round came from Western capital, whether it was SocialFi, DePIN or Restaking. In this round of "the most difficult bull market in history", you only need to follow Trump and Western concepts to switch to Easy mode.
Trump-friendly memes
BTC
After Trump took office, BTC was the first to take the lead. As the grand occasion of 2021 is still vivid in people’s minds, many old players still hope to recreate the last round of Alt season, and new players indulge in the fantasy of “all-in altcoins, and dream of getting rich overnight”. However, in this round of bull market, as long as you hold BTC well, the yield has already outperformed the portfolio of “full of altcoins”.
Since the beginning of the year, BTC has risen from 40,000 to around 98,000 now, achieving a return of more than 200%. During the same period, only the meme track and some mainstream public chain tokens (such as SOL, SUI) have outperformed BTC, and the prices of most altcoins have not changed much since the beginning of the year.
Before the election, Trump had been publicly and loudly promoting BTC. At the Bitcoin 2024 conference held in Nashville, Trump appeared and delivered a nearly one-hour speech, declaring that he would "fire the chairman of the SEC" and "never sell your Bitcoin." At the same time, he would establish a national strategic reserve of Bitcoin to ensure that the United States would become the world's encryption center and Bitcoin superpower. Trump's favorable policies and positive commitments to Bitcoin after his election are rare in the global capital market. With the help of Trump's shouting, BTC broke through the pressure level that had been suppressed for a long time at the 70,000 mark with barbaric power, and achieved a 40% increase in a short period of time.
In addition to ETFs, national strategic reserves and Bitcoin superpowers have become the biggest narratives for BTC.
DOGE
As the originator of meme coins, Dogecoin has a deep relationship with Musk and Trump. In April 2019, Musk tweeted that Dogecoin was his favorite cryptocurrency and thought Dogecoin was "cool." In May 2021, Musk called himself "Dogefather" and called Dogecoin "the people's cryptocurrency" on the (Saturday Night Live) show. As time went by, Musk gradually became deeply bound to Dogecoin and even became the image spokesperson of Dogecoin in the public's cognition. So far, DOGE has experienced 4 bull and bear cycles, but it still sits firmly in the top ten of the crypto market value.
Most people hold the view that "the market value is too big to pull" and "buy new, not old", and do not pay attention to DOGE. However, after DOGE was launched, it directly took an independent trend and amazed everyone with its own "road to growth". It has quadrupled in the past year and doubled in the past month, reaching 1 USD per coin.
BABY
Pepe's name comes from the character Pepe the Frog created by American cartoonist Matt Furie, who first appeared in his work Boy's Club. This character has won love with its cute image and funny expression, and has gained a certain amount of attention on the Internet. Pepe the Frog first appeared in a comic in 2005 and later became a well-known emoticon in Internet culture. Pepe coin was issued on Ethereum in April 2023. After nearly a year of wash trading, it began to soar in February this year. Since then, it has maintained a market value fluctuation of billions of US dollars.
Pepe, a popular meme in the West, was listed on Robinhood and Coinbase after being silent for half a year. Robinhood, the largest exchange in the US stock market, has only two memecoins, DOGE and SHIB. The listing of PEPE shows that the US market attaches great importance to PEPE. This is another major positive for Pepe's development in the US market, which directly caused the market value of PEPE, which was maintained at 6 billion US dollars, to surge by 50%, breaking the 10 billion mark in a short time.
WIF
In late December 2019, images of various logos and images added to woolen hats as profile pictures became popular on Twitter among esports organizations and celebrities. WIF, which stands for dogwifhat, was inspired by the meme originator "DOGE" and added the characteristics of a woolen hat with viral fission.
WIF and PEPE have similar routes and can be said to be PEPE's junior. On November 14, Coinbase listed dogwifhat (WIF), which rose by more than 30% on the same day, close to the previous high. In addition to being listed on Coinbase, Robinhood also launched WIF on November 25, making WIF the first Solana memecoin to be listed on Robinhood.
PNUT
PNUT is the animal meme that Musk has called out the most in this cycle, except for DOGE.
The squirrel image of PNUT comes from the squirrel "Peanut" adopted by an engineer named Mark 7 years ago. Mark often shares interactive videos with Peanut on Instagram and gradually gains hundreds of thousands of fans. However, nearby residents complained to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) about Peanut, believing that it carries an infectious disease. What is puzzling is that DEC broke into Mark Longo's home and took Peanut away without a search warrant. So Mark Longo launched a petition on social media, and tens of thousands of fans signed and participated. Unfortunately, Peanut was eventually euthanized by DEC.
After Peanut was euthanized, Dogecoin issued a statement condemning the Democratic Party, and Musk also wrote a statement mourning Peanut and claiming that Trump's coming to power would save Peanut. The animal image represented by Peanut is not just a meme of an internet celebrity, but has begun to add a buff with the political color of "Trump".
PNUT started a nine-day washout due to the rapid surge in the previous period, when a large number of retail investors jumped on the bandwagon. PNUT stabilized at a small level today and showed signs of a pullback.
In the previous article in the "Bull Market Bottoming" series, the author gave a detailed narrative analysis of PNUT ((Why is $PNUT the biggest alpha in this round? | Bull Market Bottoming List)), and the explanation given in the article is exactly why PNUT has been steadily above 1 billion US dollars, while most memecoins cannot break through the 1 billion hard cap.
In addition to these memes, there are also DOGE (a new government department established for Musk after Trump took office) and Banana (the logo on Musk’s rocket) that are highly related to Musk. For an explanation of DOGE, please refer to my previous article: (How did 50 billion Dogecoins allow Musk to enter the new US government department?)
Trump's favorable companies
People often follow the historical experience of the bull market over the years, and the usual investment logic is the "pyramid wine glass" logic: BTC leads the rise, and the overflowing funds flow to mainstream currencies such as ETH, and then overflow again to the altcoins with lower market value, thus ushering in the "altcoin season". Under this round of BTC's inclusion in the "BTC bull market" in the United States, the market realized belatedly that there seemed to be no altcoin season. "BTC has always led the rise, and funds have never overflowed."
However, the alt season did not cease to exist, but it changed its form: after BTC led the rise, the funds overflowed to US stocks with BTC-related concepts.
COIN
COIN is the stock of Coinbase, which has achieved an extremely high increase of 800% this year. Before the election, Coinbase's stock price continued to rise due to the arrival of the Crypto bull market. Although COIN ushered in a retracement in the middle of the year, Coinbase's stock price rose by 31% on November 6, 2024 due to the election results, from US$193.96 to US$254.31. Investing in COIN is equivalent to investing in the beta of "US crypto assets", and any good news about crypto assets will almost be absorbed by COIN's stock price.
In addition to COIN, other crypto-series U.S. stock targets also have a strong push.
MSTR
MicroStrategy itself is a company that makes business intelligence software, but in 2019, MicroStrategy started the strategy of "issuing bonds to buy coins". As of now, MicroStrategy already has 1.2% of the total circulating supply of Bitcoin in its account, making it the publicly listed company with the most Bitcoin in the world. MicroStrategy's stock price soared 1000% in one year, far exceeding the return of Bitcoin.
MicroStrategy's strategy of issuing bonds to buy coins has caused many people to worry that MSTR is the next LUNA, but in fact, MicroStrategy is much more secure than LUNA. And its nearest repayment period is in 2027, which is still too early for us.
In addition to companies like Microstategy that rely on Bitcoin to step on their left foot and right foot, many "small-cap" companies have also begun to follow Microstategy's strategy. For example, fitness equipment company Interactive Strength (TRNR) said it plans to purchase up to $5 million worth of Bitcoin after its board of directors approved the use of cryptocurrency as a treasury reserve asset. After the news was announced, the company's stock price soared by more than 80%. Similarly, "small-cap" companies including LQR House (LQR), Cosmos Health (COSM), Nano Labs (NA), Gaxos (GXAI), Solidion Technology (STI) and Genius Group (GNS) also saw a brief surge in stock prices after announcing their Bitcoin vault plans in November.
Western concept public chain
In addition to the currencies that are strongly related to Trump, the coming to power of this Bitcoin president is a great boon to all crypto projects that have taken root in the West. Not only will the regulation of crypto assets in the United States be relaxed, but it will also facilitate the flow of funds from traditional finance into crypto assets. Among the currencies listed on Coinbase, the first ones that traditional American brokerages can access, in addition to BTC ETH, are ADA, BCH, DOT, XRP, etc. Similarly, when the water is flooding, it will only go to places with large basins.
SUN
Solana, as one of the high-performance public chains that challenged Ethereum in the last cycle, seems to have "half" replaced Ethereum's position in the crypto ecosystem in this cycle. In the last cycle, Solana was "smooth sailing" with the support of FTX. However, after the collapse of FTX, Solana has repeatedly become the object of everyone's FUD, with a low point of only $11. Since September 2023, Solana has ushered in its own trend. In a year, Solana has become a veritable meme public chain in the entire Crypto with its high performance and low GAS, forming a unique gameplay with meme as the core, successfully breaking through $200 and hitting the previous high again.
XRP
XRP was mired in the SEC's legal disputes and market regulation at the beginning of this cycle. In December 2020, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a lawsuit against Ripple Labs, accusing it of conducting an unregistered securities offering by selling XRP. The SEC believes that XRP meets the criteria of a security and therefore needs to be registered and comply with federal securities laws. Due to the SEC's lawsuit and regulatory uncertainty surrounding XRP's classification, several cryptocurrency exchanges, including Coinbase, delisted XRP. On August 7, 2023, the court made a final judgment requiring Ripple to pay a civil penalty of $125,035.1 million and prohibiting the company from further violations (of securities laws).
Ripple CEO claims on FOX News that XRP ETF will be launched in 2025
However, after Trump took office, XRP not only cleared the shadow of its previous regulatory issues, but many institutions also began to apply for XRP's ETF.
In early October, Bitwise and Canary Capital successively submitted applications for XRP ETF to the SEC. On November 2, 21 Shares submitted an application for XRP ETF "21 Shares Core XRP TRUST" to the US SEC, joining the ranks of those seeking approval for XRP ETF. On November 25, WisdomTree Funds submitted a fund registration application named "WisdomTree XRP Fund" in Delaware and prepared to submit an S-1 registration to the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
Although the SEC has not yet approved any ETF, crypto asset ETFs may be approved in batches after Trump officially takes office.
HIM
Uniswap, as the trump card application of Crypto, has become the "first stop on the chain" for many people. It is still the Dapp with the largest revenue to this day. It accounts for 50% of the trading volume among all DEXs and has been the leader of DEX to this day. However, UNI is not in the portfolio of most people. The biggest reasons are nothing more than "the market value of 7 billion is too large and there is no money-making effect" and "UNI is a virtual coin with no practical use."
Uniswap's potential is not limited to the leading DEX. In October of this year, Uniswap announced the launch of Unichain, which is designed specifically for DeFi (Unichain was hastily launched. What projects can be rushed at present?), and the biggest benefit of the token UNI has not yet been released. Uniswap is the largest DEX in Crypto, and the SEC has been sharpening its knife to collect protection fees. On April 10 of this year, the SEC issued a warning to Uniswap and planned to take enforcement action against the company. The core point of contention is that if the token UNI wants to empower and distribute Uniswap's handling fees to the holders of the token, then UNI will conflict with (Securities Law). If Trump comes to power, UNI will not be restricted by regulation. Its "dividend" nature will raise UNI to new heights.
BASE
Base is a Layer 2 launched by Coinbase. Although no tokens have been issued yet, the fundamentals of Base far exceed other L2s. Not only is the trading experience smoother than the main network, but many native narratives appear on Base, such as a number of SocialFi projects. In the meme track, Base is not to be outdone and has begun to snatch the big piece of "AI meme" from Solana. Whether it is VIRTUAL, which supports the batch issuance of AI Agents, or Pump.fun CLANKER on Base, the wave of AI has quietly set off on Base. The author has summarized the targets of the Base AI ecosystem (What are the hype targets of the Base ecosystem that is quietly brewing a hundredfold opportunity?). Among them, Clanker has exceeded 100 million market value today, breaking many people's inherent impression of the ceiling of assets on the Base chain.
The same goes for "old projects" such as DOT and ADA, which have too large market capitalization and are too early.
Summarize
When conducting investment research and analysis, most people tend to fall into the psychological trap of "I am the only one in the world" and look for alpha that only a few people pay attention to.
There are too many noises around us since we were young: in traditional education, teachers often pay more attention to students who can solve problems with new solutions; in martial arts novels, the monks who are highly skilled in martial arts often have their own "unique secrets". Influenced by such social habits, people are usually affected by this "I am the only one in the world" prisoner's dilemma when they come to the market.
Most ordinary traders look down on the top 100 or even top 10 coins by market value, and usually search for tens of millions of small-cap coins to find "opportunities to get rich quickly." Instead of spending so much energy on the alphas of various tracks, studying the alpha of "Trump" may be the most cost-effective way.
