The year 2024 is undoubtedly an important year in crypto history.
This year, centered around the two core narratives of ETFs and the U.S. elections, using Bitcoin as the main leverage, the crypto industry successfully broke through this year. Publicly listed companies, traditional financial institutions, and even national governments have rushed in, significantly increasing mainstream acceptance and recognition. The regulatory environment has also moved towards a clearer and more lenient path with the new government taking office. Mainstream collisions, path divergence, and regulatory evolution have become the main themes of the industry this year.
01 Review of 2024: Bitcoin Rises to the Top, Ethereum Follows, MEME Casinos Draw Attention
Looking at the main developments of the industry this year, Bitcoin is undoubtedly the core narrative.
ETFs and national reserves have allowed Bitcoin to successfully reach $100,000, officially declaring that Bitcoin transcends the concept of crypto, becoming a globally resilient anti-inflation asset, with its value as a store of wealth recognized. BTC is beginning to transition from digital gold to a super-sovereign currency, marking a phased victory in this grand financial experiment that began with Satoshi Nakamoto. On the other hand, the Bitcoin ecosystem has expanded this year. Although inscriptions, runes, and even L2 have been in a hot-and-cold situation, the diverse Bitcoin ecosystem has initially taken shape, with applications in BTCFi, NFTs, gaming, and social media continuing to develop. Bitcoin DeFi TVL skyrocketed from $300 million at the beginning of the year to $6.755 billion, growing more than 20 times throughout the year. Among them, Babylon has become the largest protocol on the Bitcoin chain, reaching a TVL of $5.564 billion by December 20, accounting for 82.37% of the total. The broad BTCFi sector has performed impressively this year, with the share of Bitcoin spot ETFs surging and MicroStrategy being included in the Nasdaq 100, reflecting Bitcoin's overwhelming success in the CeFi space.
In terms of recovery paths, leveraging its unique advantages of low cost and high efficiency, Solana aims for a core liquidity position and has leapt to become the undisputed king of MEME, becoming a gathering place for retail investors this year. Solana's daily on-chain fees have often exceeded Ethereum's, and the increase in new developers has also outpaced Ethereum, showcasing a significant catching-up trend.
TON and SUI also broke through this year. With 900 million users, Telegram has single-handedly ignited the blockchain gaming sector, creating a new entry point for Web3 traffic, providing strong stimulation for a market that had been dormant for a long time before September. Backed by a large user base, TON has finally transitioned from the long-standing dawn before its explosion into a growth fast track. According to Dune data, TON's cumulative on-chain users have exceeded 38 million, with cumulative trading volume exceeding $2.1 billion. SUI, on the other hand, has made rapid progress with its Move language public chain and is opening up hardware, diversifying protocols, and introducing airdrops, presenting a seemingly bright future. Compared to the price-driven SUI, the public chain Aptos, although its price performance is relatively weak, has gained more favor from traditional capital this year, successfully establishing partnerships with BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, and Libre, and its compliant nature may bring it a new dawn in the upcoming RWA and BTCFI cycles.
The Fair Launch Platform Pump.fun was born, reshaping the MEME landscape and becoming one of the most profitable and successful applications of the year. In November, Pump.fun became the 'first Solana protocol in history to generate over $100 million in monthly revenue.' According to Dune data, as of December 22, Pump.fun's cumulative revenue exceeded $320 million, with a total of approximately 4.93 million Tokens deployed.
Of course, just because the platform is making money does not mean retail investors are making money. Considering the one-in-a-hundred-thousand odds, and only 3% of users can profit over $1,000 on Pump.fun, coupled with the increasingly prominent trend of MEME institutionalization, from the user's perspective, regardless of how fair it seems, the dynamics of being cut and cutting others are hard to avoid. Perhaps it is precisely for this reason that adding fundamentals to MEME has become a new development model for the project. Most projects with relatively long cycles like Desci and AIMEME have adopted this model, but as of now, fleeting moments still dominate, and the saying 'run fast to live well' is still gaining value.
Influenced by the U.S. elections, another legendary application has emerged. Polymarket has outperformed all other betting platforms on the market, gaining fame for its high accuracy in predictive markets. In October alone, the Polymarket website's traffic reached 35 million visits, twice that of popular betting sites like FanDuel, and its monthly trading volume surged from $40 million in April to $2.5 billion. A broad user base and genuine demand equate to clear value applications, which is only further endorsed by Vitalik Buterin. The only regret is that large-scale conversion of crypto users has not been achieved. However, the new fusion of media and betting is undoubtedly approaching.
In fact, the development of PayFi is in line with market trends. It is precisely because internal market growth has encountered bottlenecks that the mainstream institutional market as an increment is at the beginning of a new cycle. To seek incremental space, PayFi has now entered a critical process. It is worth noting that due to its connection with the traditional financial system, this sector is also the Web3 track most favored by government agencies. For example, Hong Kong has already listed stablecoins and RWA as important fields for development next year.
Of course, despite the seemingly positive outlook, it cannot be denied that, under nearly two years of macroeconomic tightening and the industry's downturn, the crypto space has also undergone an exceptionally tough stress test. Innovative applications have struggled to emerge, internal conflicts have intensified, and continuous restructuring and mergers have occurred. The weakening of liquidity has led to a divergence in the crypto industry, forming a pattern where Bitcoin sees core inflows while continually siphoning off other coins. For most of this year, the altcoin market has been in a 'dead time', with the notion that 'this bull market has no altcoins' being repeatedly confirmed and refuted, only to rebound towards the year's end under Wall Street's attention, thus kicking off the altcoin season. From the current perspective, the path divergence is expected to continue in the short term, with an intensifying trend.
02 Looking Ahead to 2025: New Cycles, New Applications, New Directions
Looking back to the present, as the New Year's bell is about to ring, and looking ahead to 2025, as the Trump administration ushers in a new era for crypto, capital-rich institutions are eager to participate. So far, over 15 institutions have released their market forecasts for next year.
In terms of price predictions, all institutions express optimism about Bitcoin's value, with $150,000 to $200,000 being the peak price range suggested by six institutions. Among them, VanEck and Dragonfly believe that next year's price will reach $150,000, while Presto Research, Bitwise, and Bitcoin Suisse predict it will reach $200,000. If based on strategic reserves, Unstoppable Domains and Bitwise have proposed predictions of $500,000 or even higher. As for other coins, VanEck, Bitwise, and Presto Research have provided forecasts, believing that ETH will be around $6,000 to $7,000, while Solana will be in the range of $500 to $750. SUI may also rise to $10, and Presto and Forbes estimate that the total crypto market cap will reach $7.5 to $8 trillion, while Bitcoin Suisse states that the total market cap of altcoins will increase fivefold.
Price predictions naturally have support, as nearly all institutions believe that the U.S. economy will experience a soft landing next year, with a better macro environment, and that crypto regulation will also loosen accordingly. More than five institutions hold a positive view on Bitcoin's strategic reserves, believing that at least one sovereign nation and numerous publicly listed companies will incorporate Bitcoin into their reserves. All institutions believe that increased ETF inflows will become an objective fact.
From the perspective of specific sectors, stablecoins, tokenized assets, and AI are the areas most focused on by institutions. Regarding stablecoins, VanEck believes that the settlement volume of stablecoins will reach $300 billion next year, while Bitwise states that with accelerated legislation, fast-growing fintech applications, and global settlement promotion, the scale of stablecoins will reach $400 billion. BlockworksMippo is even more optimistic, providing an estimate of $450 billion. A16z also believes that enterprises will increasingly accept stablecoins as a payment method, and Coinbase has pointed out in its report that the next wave of real adoption (killer applications) in crypto may come from stablecoins and payments.
Regarding tokenized assets, A16z, VanEck, Coinbase, Bitwise, Bitcoin Suisse, and Framework all express optimism about the sector. A16z's forecast mentions that as the costs of blockchain infrastructure decrease, tokenization of non-traditional assets will become a new source of income, further propelling the decentralized economy. VanEck provides specific figures, believing that the value of tokenized securities will exceed $50 billion, which aligns with Bitwise's predictive data. Messari provides differentiated conclusions based on reality, stating that with declining interest rates, tokenized government bonds are expected to face resistance, but idle on-chain funds may gain more favor, shifting focus from traditional financial assets to on-chain opportunities.
In the AI direction, A16z, which has heavily invested in the AI field, remains highly optimistic about the combination of AI and crypto. It believes that AI's autonomous agency capabilities will be greatly enhanced, and artificial intelligence could have exclusive wallets to achieve autonomous behavior. Decentralized autonomous chatbots will become the first truly autonomous high-value network entities. Coinbase also agrees with this, pointing out that AI agents equipped with crypto wallets will be at the forefront of disruption. VanEck states that on-chain activities of AI agents exceed one million, while RobotVentures believes that the total market cap of AI-related tokens will at least grow fivefold. Although Dragonfly agrees that tokens will experience significant price increases, it holds a relatively conservative view on actual applications, believing that the application of underlying protocols may be relatively limited.
Bitwise and Defiprime have pointed out core usage scenarios, with the former believing that AI Agents will lead the Meme explosion, while the latter states that DeFi is the deeply integrated scenario. Messari provides a more detailed path, believing that the combination of AI and crypto has three main directions: first, new AI casinos like Bittensor and DynamicTAO; second, blockchain technology will be applied to fine-tuning small and professional models; third, the combination of AI Agents and MEME.
In other areas, institutions have different focus points for their predictions. For example, YBB believes that the revival of DeFi will be the main theme of 2025, RobotVentures predicts a wave of integration in application chains and L2 tracks, Messari estimates that almost all infrastructure protocols will adopt ZK technology by 2025, and the DEPIN industry is expected to achieve revenue in the range of tens of millions to under 100 million by 2025. VanEck and Bitcoin Suisse believe that NFTs will make a comeback, etc. Due to the abundance of text, I will not elaborate on each one here.
03 Conclusion: Where Do Investors Go?
Although there are slight differences in arguments and segmentation, it is evident that all institutions hold optimistic and positive expectations for next year. Whether it is price increases, ecosystem expansion, or mainstream adoption, all are expected to continue to reach new heights in 2025.
It is foreseeable that, just from the price perspective, mainstream coin prices will inevitably rise, especially in Q1 of next year, which will be a period of intense policy benefits. The altcoin market will continue to differentiate; influenced by ETFs, compliant altcoins will be more likely to attract capital inflows and continue their narratives, while other coins will slowly shrink. If macro liquidity tightens, the risks of altcoins will become more pronounced.
From the industrial perspective, while the robust old public chains still hold an ecological advantage, the impact from new public chains is also unavoidable. Ethereum's value capture and narrative methods will continue to ferment, but optimistically, the inflow of external funds may alleviate this to some extent, and the expansion at the technical level and the popularization of account abstraction will become significant breakthroughs for Ethereum in 2025. Solana still maintains growth momentum under capital influence, but its high dependence on MEME poses latent risks, with competition from Base becoming increasingly fierce. Additionally, it is expected that a new batch of public chains, such as Monad and Berachain, will enter the market.
The shift from infrastructure to application development is the major direction for future industry development, with consumer-level applications becoming the focus in the coming years. Application chains and chain abstractions may become the main ways to build DApps. From the sector perspective, the revival of DeFi has become a consensus, but at this stage, it is still projected onto AAVE, while centralized focus is on the payment sector, with Hyperliquid and Ethena still worth paying attention to.
The speculative trend of MEME is likely to continue in the short term, but the pace will significantly slow down, especially under the influence of the altcoin season. However, key directions such as Politifi still have relatively long narratives to explore. Nevertheless, the infrastructure surrounding MEME is still expected to improve, enhancing user experience, lowering barriers to entry, and institutionalization of MEME is an inevitable trend. It is noteworthy that new types of token launch methods can trigger a new round of excitement at any time.
Since the incremental market comes from institutions, sectors favored by institutions are expected to develop rapidly. Stablecoins, AI, RWA, and DePin will continue to be key narratives in the next round. In addition, against the backdrop of tightening liquidity, any on-chain liquidity tools and protocols that can increase leverage are likely to be favored.
A new cycle is about to arrive, and as investors, the only choice is to embrace the new while letting go of the old, discovering cycles, adapting to cycles, and deeply researching and participating.