Author: A Ray's New World
Many old players and veteran investors feel that the bull market style in 2024 will be different from that in 2021. It is challenging because there are no native narratives, no new investors entering the market, a massive number of high FDV projects harvesting, and the long-awaited mass adoption has yet to materialize...
However, as Dickens said, 'It is the best of times, it is the worst of times'. The key to wealth is often written on the surface of the riddle.
Following Trump's bull market
At the moment Bitcoin is approved through an ETF, cryptocurrency assets have seemingly become a market dominated by the West. Almost all significant benefits and narrative innovations this round have come from Western capital, whether it's SocialFi, DePIN, or Restaking. In this 'most difficult bull market in history', one only needs to follow Trump and Western concepts to switch to easy mode.
Trump's favorable memes
BTC
After Trump takes office, BTC is the first to charge ahead. Due to the splendor of 2021 still fresh in memory, many old players still hope to replicate the last round of Alt season, while new players indulge in the fantasy of 'betting on altcoins for a chance to get rich'. However, in this bull market, holding BTC well has already outperformed a portfolio filled with altcoins.
This is the worst of times, this is the best of times
Since the beginning of the year, BTC has surged from 40,000 to about 98,000 now, achieving a return rate of over 200%. The only sectors that have outperformed BTC during this period are the meme sector and some mainstream public chain tokens (such as SOL, SUI), while most altcoins have not seen much difference in price from the beginning of the year.
Before the election, Trump had been publicly promoting BTC. At the Bitcoin 2024 conference held in Nashville, Trump appeared and delivered a speech lasting nearly an hour, declaring that 'he would fire the SEC chairman' and 'never sell your Bitcoin'. At the same time, he announced the establishment of a national strategic reserve for Bitcoin, ensuring that the U.S. would become a global crypto center and a Bitcoin superpower. After Trump was elected, various favorable policies and positive commitments regarding Bitcoin were quite rare in the global capital markets. With Trump's support, BTC broke through the long-standing pressure level of 7W and achieved a short-term increase of 40%.
In addition to ETFs, national strategic reserves and Bitcoin superpowers have become the biggest narratives for BTC.
DOGE
Dogecoin, as the ancestor of meme coins, has a deep relationship with Musk and Trump. In April 2019, Musk stated on Twitter that Dogecoin was his favorite cryptocurrency and thought it was 'cool'. In May 2021, during the Saturday Night Live show, Musk referred to himself as the 'Dogefather' and called Dogecoin 'the people's cryptocurrency'. Over time, Musk has become increasingly associated with Dogecoin, even becoming the public's perception of Dogecoin's spokesperson. To date, DOGE has gone through four cycles of bull and bear markets, but still firmly holds a spot in the top ten of crypto market cap.
Many people hold the belief that 'the market cap is too large to move' and 'buy new instead of old', and do not pay attention to DOGE. However, after its launch, DOGE directly walked its independent market, stunning everyone with its 'rise to fame'. In the past year, it has quadrupled, and in the past month, it has doubled, heading straight for 1 dollar per coin.
PEPE
The name Pepe 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 appearance and funny expressions, gaining some attention on the internet. Pepe the Frog first appeared in a comic in 2005 and later became a well-known meme in internet culture. Pepe coin was issued on Ethereum in April 2023 and started to surge after nearly a year of consolidation, maintaining a market cap fluctuation of several billion dollars since then.
Pepe, as a meme emoji popular in the West, was listed on Robinhood and Coinbase after being dormant for half a year. Robinhood, as the largest trading platform in U.S. stocks, previously only listed DOGE and SHIB, and the listing of PEPE indicates the importance of the U.S. market for PEPE. This is another significant benefit for Pepe's development route in the U.S. market, directly causing the market cap of PEPE, which maintains at $6 billion, to surge by 50%, briefly breaking the $10 billion barrier.
WIF
In late December 2019, images of various logos and images added to beanies became popular as profile pictures among esports organizations and celebrities. WIF stands for dogwifhat, inspired by the meme ancestor 'DOGE', combined with the viral nature of the beanie.
WIF and PEPE follow a similar path and can be said to be PEPE's junior. On November 14, Coinbase listed dogwifhat (WIF), which surged over 30% on the same day, nearing its previous high. In addition to already being listed on Coinbase, on November 25, Robinhood also listed WIF, making it the first Solana memecoin listed on Robinhood.
PNUT
PNUT is the most shouted animal meme by Musk in this cycle besides DOGE.
The squirrel image of PNUT comes from a squirrel named Peanut adopted by an engineer named Mark seven years ago. Mark often shared interactive videos between him and Peanut on Instagram, gradually gaining hundreds of thousands of followers. However, nearby residents complained to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) about Peanut, claiming it carried infectious diseases. Strangely, the DEC intruded into Mark Longo's home without a search warrant to take Peanut away. Consequently, Mark Longo initiated a petition on social media, with tens of thousands of fans signing up. Unfortunately, Peanut was ultimately euthanized by the DEC.
After Peanut's euthanasia, Dogecoin condemned the Democrats, and Musk also paid tribute to Peanut, declaring that Trump's ascension would save Peanut. The animal image represented by Peanut is not just a meme of a social media celebrity but starts to overlay a 'Trump' political color buff.
Due to the rapid surge in PNUT earlier, many retail investors 'scrambled' to sell, leading to a long washout of 9 days. PNUT has stabilized at a small level today and shows signs of a pullback.
In the previous article of 'Bull Market Bottom Picking', I provided a detailed narrative analysis of PNUT (Why is $PNUT the biggest alpha in this round? | Bull Market Bottom Picking List), and the explanation given in the article is precisely why PNUT has been able to remain steadily above 1 billion dollars, while most memecoins cannot break through the 1 billion hard cap.
In addition to these memes, there are also DOGE (related to the new government department established by Musk after Trump takes office) and Banana (the logo on Musk's rocket).
Trump's favorable enterprises
People often rely on historical experiences from previous bull markets to invest, and the usual investment logic is the 'pyramid cup' logic: BTC leads, and the overflowed funds flow into mainstream coins like ETH, and then further spill into lower market cap altcoins, thus ushering in the 'altcoin season'. Under this BTC's inclusion in America's 'BTC bull market', the market has belatedly discovered that it seems there is no altcoin season. 'BTC has always been leading, and funds have never overflowed.'
However, the altcoin season has not disappeared, but rather has changed its form: the funds that followed BTC's lead overflowed into US stocks related to BTC concepts.
COIN
COIN is Coinbase's stock, which achieved an extraordinary 800% increase this year. Before the election, Coinbase's stock price continued to rise due to the arrival of the crypto bull market, although COIN experienced a pullback mid-year, Coinbase's stock price surged by 31% on November 6, 2024, due to the election results, rising from $193.96 to $254.31. Investing in COIN is equivalent to investing in the β of 'American crypto assets', and any positive news regarding crypto assets is almost absorbed by COIN's stock price.
Aside from COIN, the push from other crypto-related U.S. stocks is also very strong.
MSTR
MicroStrategy itself is a company that does business intelligence software, but in 2020 it started the strategy of 'issuing bonds to buy coins'. As of now, MicroStrategy owns 1.2% of the total circulating supply of Bitcoin, making it the publicly listed company with the most Bitcoin in the world. MicroStrategy's stock price skyrocketed 1000% in a year, far exceeding Bitcoin's returns.
MicroStrategy's debt issuance strategy to buy coins has led many to worry that MSTR is the next LUNA, but in fact, MicroStrategy's safety is much better than LUNA. Moreover, its recent repayment deadline is in 2027, which is still far from us.
In addition to companies like MicroStrategy that rely on Bitcoin, many 'small-cap' companies are also starting to imitate MicroStrategy's strategy. For example, fitness equipment company Interactive Strength (TRNR) announced that after its board approved cryptocurrency as a treasury reserve asset, the company plans to purchase up to 5 million dollars worth of Bitcoin. After the news was announced, the company's stock price surged more than 80%. Similarly, 'small-cap' companies such as 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 Bitcoin treasury plans in November.
Western concept public chains
In addition to coins closely related to Trump, the ascent of this Bitcoin president is a huge benefit for all crypto projects rooted in the West. Not only will the regulation of crypto assets in the U.S. loosen, but it will also facilitate the inflow of traditional finance into crypto assets. Among the coins listed on Coinbase, the traditional American brokerage can first access besides BTC and ETH, also ADA, BCH, DOT, XRP, etc. Similarly, when the floodgates open, the water will only go to the places with larger containers.
SOL
Solana, as one of the high-performance public chains challenging Ethereum in the previous cycle, seems to have 'half' replaced Ethereum's position in the crypto ecosystem this cycle. In the previous cycle, Solana sailed smoothly with FTX, but after FTX's collapse, Solana repeatedly became a target of FUD, with a low point of only $11. Since September 2023, Solana has welcomed its own trending market. Within a year, Solana has become the true meme public chain in Crypto with its high performance and low GAS characteristics, forming a unique gameplay centered on memes, successfully breaking through $200 and once again challenging previous highs.
XRP
At the beginning of this cycle, XRP fell into the quagmire of SEC legal disputes and market regulation. 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 standard for securities and therefore needs to be registered and comply with federal securities laws. Due to the SEC's lawsuit and the regulatory uncertainty surrounding XRP's classification, several cryptocurrency exchanges including Coinbase delisted XRP. On August 7, 2023, the court made a final ruling requiring Ripple to pay a civil penalty of $125.0351 million and prohibiting the company from further violating (securities laws).
Ripple's CEO claimed on FOX News that the XRP ETF will be launched in 2025
However, after Trump takes office, XRP not only swept away the shadow of past regulatory issues but also several institutions began to compete to apply for XRP ETFs.
In early October, Bitwise and Canary Capital submitted applications for XRP ETFs to the SEC one after another. On November 2, 21 Shares submitted an application for the '21 Shares Core XRP TRUST' XRP ETF to the U.S. SEC, joining the ranks of those seeking approval for XRP ETFs. 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 U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Although the SEC has not yet approved any ETFs, after Trump officially takes office, cryptocurrency ETFs may be approved in batches.
UNI
Uniswap, as the ace application of Crypto, has become many people's 'first stop on the chain'. To this day, it remains the largest revenue-generating Dapp. It accounts for 50% of all DEX trading volume and has maintained its position as the leader of DEX. However, UNI is not in most people's portfolios, mainly because 'the market cap of 7 billion is too large, with no profit effect' and 'UNI is an air token, with no practical use'.
Uniswap's potential goes beyond being a leading DEX. In October this year, Uniswap announced the launch of Unichain, specifically designed for DeFi, while the biggest benefit of the UNI token has yet to be released. As the largest DEX in Crypto, the SEC has been sharpening its knives, wanting to collect protection fees. On April 10 this year, the SEC issued a warning to Uniswap, planning to take enforcement action against the company. The core controversy lies in whether the UNI token, if it wants to empower and distribute Uniswap's transaction fees to token holders, would conflict with (securities law). If Trump takes office, UNI would be free from regulatory restrictions. Its 'dividend' nature would elevate UNI to new heights.
BASE
Base is a Layer2 launched by Coinbase. Although it has not issued tokens yet, the fundamentals of Base far exceed other L2s. Not only is the trading experience smoother than the mainnet, but many native narratives have also emerged on Base, such as a host of SocialFi projects. In the meme sector, Base is also not to be outdone, starting to seize the 'AI meme' market share from Solana. Whether it's VIRTUAL, which supports AI Agent's batch issuance, or Pump.fun CLANKER on Base, the wave of AI has quietly risen on Base. Among them, Clanker has already surpassed a market cap of 100 million today, breaking many people's preconceived notions of the asset ceiling on the Base chain.
There are also DOT, ADA, and other 'old projects' due to their excessive market cap and early timing.
Summary
In research and analysis, most people often fall into the psychological misconception of 'I am the only one in the world', looking for alphas that only a few people pay attention to.
Since childhood, there has been too much such noise around us: in traditional education, teachers often give more attention to students who can solve problems with new methods; in martial arts novels, the highly skilled sweeping monk often has his own 'unique secrets'. Influenced by such social habits, one usually arrives in the market also influenced by this 'I am the only one in the world' prisoner dilemma.
Most ordinary traders look down on these top 100, even top 10 market cap coins, often searching for coins with small market caps in the tens of millions for 'wealth opportunities'. Instead of spending so much energy focusing on the alpha of various sectors, it might be more effective to study the 'Trump' alpha, as this is the worst of times.
