Source Reference Bankless
Author｜Golem（@web3_golem）
The Bitcoin price opened with a downward trend in October, dropping to around $59,000 at the lowest. However, in recent days, the Bitcoin price has seen a good rebound, reaching a high of around $68,422 yesterday. So, with the overall market trend turning positive, how have the Altcoins performed in the subsequent October?
The Bankless analysis team made predictions on the price trends of 10 Altcoins before and after October, with 5 bullish and 5 bearish calls. This article will summarize the predictions and reasons of the Bankless analyst team, and make a summary of their Altcoin predictions that expired in October for readers' reference.
October Expiry Prediction Success Rate: 70%
Excluding the neutral tokens, there were a total of 10 Altcoins whose price trends were predicted by the Bankless analysis team and expired in October, with the results as follows:
Predicted bullish but declined: Instadapp (INST) declined 43%;
Predicted bearish but increased: Maple Finance (MPL) increased 43.56%, BNB Chain (BNB) increased 2%;
Predicted bearish and actually declined: Ondo Finance (ONDO) declined 25.28%, Livepeer (LPT) declined 27%, ETH Name Service (ENS) declined 36.71%, Celestia (TIA) declined 1%, Polkadot (DOT) declined 36.46%, ether.fi (ETHFI) declined 40%, Worldcoin (WLD) declined 26.07%.
Among them, the most severe reversal was Instadapp (INST) and Maple Finance (MPL), and the highest return was ether.fi (ETHFI). However, the overall success rate of the Altcoin predictions that expired in October was still 70%.
Bullish Altcoins
dYdX (DYDX)
Sector: DeFi
Reason: Launch of the US election prediction market, which may increase the staking yield of DYDX
Prediction Period: October 16, 2024 to January 16, 2025
Prediction Price: $0.96
Price Performance Since Prediction: Up 1.28%
Previously, the Bankless analyst team had been bearish on dYdX since July 23 due to concerns about the decline in usage metrics, but DYDX has since fallen 26%. However, a bullish catalyst has now emerged, as dYdX recently launched the "TRUMPWIN-USD" trading market, which will allow traders to long or short on whether Trump will be elected as the US president with leverage up to 20x.
While the extreme volatility of prediction markets may require forced deleveraging or closing of winning positions to prevent market insolvency before the event settlement, the extreme leverage offered by these contracts will undoubtedly attract a large number of speculators. Although the product has just been launched, the monthly data of the competitive prediction market Polymarket has already doubled due to the surging demand for presidential prediction markets; this trend is almost certain to accelerate as the US election approaches.
The staking yield of DYDX is positively correlated with the growing demand for the dYdX perpetual contract market. Considering that the leveraged US presidential prediction market could be an eye-catching product, the staking yield for holders may increase in the coming weeks, which could in turn drive up the token price.
Jupiter (JUP)
Sector: DeFi
Reason: Grayscale is bullish, high product-market fit
Prediction Period: October 15, 2024 to January 15, 2025
Prediction Price: $0.88
Price Performance Since Prediction: Down 3.66%
On October 10, Grayscale added JUP to its "Assets Under Consideration" list, marking the token as a potential candidate for inclusion in future investment products.
Jupiter is a full-service decentralized exchange deployed on Solana. Its core product is a DEX aggregator that automatically routes user trades to the pool with the best execution price. While Jupiter currently does not charge swap fees and its swap smart contract does hold assets, the exchange processes billions of dollars in spot token swaps daily and can easily monetize its order flow in the future.
Although Jupiter's fully diluted valuation is $9 billion, 15% higher than Uniswap, this valuation gap may be justified by Jupiter's complementary products, such as extremely high-leverage perpetual futures (with yields up to 28% on $700 million in liquidity) and a powerful token launch platform.
Thala (THL)
Sector: DeFi
Reason: Top Aptos ecosystem protocol, can benefit from ecosystem growth
Prediction Period: October 7, 2024 to January 7, 2025
Prediction Price: $0.51
Price Performance Since Prediction: Up 6.14%
While Aptos has not received much attention due to its lackluster performance throughout 2024, there is hope that APT could be the next beneficiary of the L1 boom, and the ecosystem has been performing healthily since mid-September.
Thala (THL) is a comprehensive DeFi application that provides token swapping, liquidity staking, and over-collateralized stablecoin, and is the largest investable application and the third-largest protocol by TVL on the Aptos network.
Thala is built using Move, the native programming language of Aptos and Sui networks, and while there are competitors on both chains, the protocol's market share is not eroded by mature EVM alternatives like Uniswap. Additionally, from a technical standpoint, Thala can also be deployed on Move-based networks (such as Movement).
Aptos (APT)
Sector: L1
Reason: Solid fundamentals
Prediction Period: October 4, 2024 to January 4, 2025
Prediction Price: $9.13
Price Performance Since Prediction: Up 9.97%
Aptos has underperformed since the beginning of 2023, but the token has seen a recovery after hitting its low in August, doubling in value in the two months prior to this analysis.
While Aptos' use cases are still not mature, and its valuation is far above Ethereum, Aptos' on-chain fundamentals appear to be trending positively, with a steady increase in daily active addresses and a new all-time high in TVL.
Aptos has a theoretical maximum throughput of 160,000 transactions per second (TPS), making it one of the fastest blockchains in the crypto space, a feature that makes it well-suited for high-performance applications like DePIN that require the bandwidth.
Axelar (AXL)
Sector: Infrastructure
Reason: Launch of new cross-chain capabilities, can leverage the recent L1 network boom
Prediction Period: October 3, 2024 to January 3, 2025
Prediction Price: $0.65
Price Performance Since Prediction: Up 23.15%
Axelar's Mobius Development Stack (MDS) was launched on October 3, the latest cross-chain interoperability standard utilizing the AXL token, providing an open set of tools and protocols that the developers claim will "unlock a whole new design space for multi-chain and enable new dimensions of building in Web3".
Here is the English translation:With Axelar's Interchain Amplifier, new cross-chain bridges can be easily created at the smart contract level without major protocol changes, enabling new interoperability standards to natively support Flow, Hedera, Solana, Stacks, Stellar, Sui, and the XRP Ledger.
While the AXL token retains utility under the MDS and can be staked by network validators to process transactions, the structure also allows for re-staking using ETH or BTC collateral to enhance security guarantees.
The Bankless analyst team is bullish on the AXL token performance, believing this interoperability token is well-positioned to ride the recent outperformance of L1 tokens, which could accelerate network exploration and bridging activity.
Bearish Tokens
Uniswap (UNI)
Sector: DeFi
Rationale: Still requires bridging, swap experience may be poor
Forecast Period: October 10, 2024 to January 10, 2025
Forecast Price: $8.35
Performance to Date: Down 9.1%
On October 10, Uniswap launched Unichain, a universal rollup built on the OP Stack, aiming to become the liquidity center for crypto and solve the inevitable liquidity fragmentation issues arising from Ethereum's rollup-centric roadmap.
The network plans to leverage a trusted execution environment (TEE) protected by UNI validators, who provide fast pre-confirmations and earn network fees for their service, reducing user transaction wait times from 1 second to 200-250 milliseconds, and realizing the long-awaited use of the UNI token as the network's gas consumption token.
However, Unichain swaps still require time-consuming bridging transactions, although the native interoperability of the OP Stack is expected to significantly reduce bridging wait times and transaction costs within the OP Stack.
The Bankless analyst team is bearish on the UNI price, as while Unichain presents a grand vision for an interoperable future and empowers UNI, the fundamental need for bridging results in a worse swap experience. Given profit-sensitive on-chain traders are unlikely to default to using Unichain for poorer execution and longer wait times, it's hard to imagine this experiment yielding anything other than increased liquidity fragmentation and deteriorating trade execution.
Wormhole (W)
Sector: Infrastructure
Rationale: New airdrop activities may not provide strong enough incentives, trading volume declining, market may struggle to absorb future token unlocks
Forecast Period: October 2, 2024 to January 2, 2025
Forecast Price: $0.36
Performance to Date: Down 17.48%
In August, the Bankless analyst team was already bearish on the W token performance. Whether Wormhole's new airdrop activities can incentivize adoption of the token remains uncertain, and the market may struggle to absorb future token supply.
While the token price has risen along with the broader crypto market throughout the month, Wormhole trading volume plummeted 36% (from $255 million) from August to September, and the token price saw a significant spike in the days after Blackrock's BUIDL blockchain infrastructure partner Securitize announced it would leverage Wormhole to provide cross-chain functionality for its tokenized asset products.
Additionally, the Korean exchange Upbit listed the W trading pair on October 2, causing the token price to immediately surge 30%, but the price trend soon reversed shortly after the trading went live.
The Bankless analyst team remains bearish on W in October, skeptical of the benefits of Wormhole's airdrop incentive programs and doubtful that the high-profile partnership announcements can reverse the declining trading volume, viewing the Upbit listing-induced FOMO as fleeting.
EigenLayer (EIGEN)
Sector: Infrastructure
Rationale: Token overvalued, AVS actual yields may be poor
Forecast Period: October 1, 2024 to January 1, 2025
Forecast Price: $4
Performance to Date: Down 16%
At the time of analysis, EIGEN had a trading market cap of $740 million and a fully diluted valuation close to $6.7 billion. While re-staking has been touted as the future of crypto economic security, EigenLayer's high valuation may struggle to justify its reasonableness in the coming months.
From a fundamental perspective, EigenLayer and its applications will inevitably be scrutinized for their revenue-generating capabilities; while the profitability prospects of the entire EigenLayer ecosystem remain questionable without live AVS data.
Even in the most optimistic case, leading AVS may only generate a few percentage points of actual yield. Crypto investors will need to absorb token inflation used to subsidize these low returns, a fundamentally unsustainable balance, especially for new services with little or no live integrations.
ether.fi (ETHFI)
Sector: LST
Rationale: Token overvalued, market may struggle to absorb subsequent massive unlocks
Forecast Period: September 30, 2024 to December 30, 2024
Forecast Price: $1.82
Performance to Date: Down 8.24%
In July, the Bankless analyst team was bearish on ETHFI, anticipating that TVL outflows would be used to chase other airdrop opportunities and allocate more tokens, weakening the growth hopes supporting ether.fi's high valuation and leading to token price declines.
However, ether.fi has not lost market share and TVL to competitors, but has successfully increased its deposits through the creation of novel re-staking tokens and ongoing airdrop programs, although its perpetual token issuance policy has had a clear negative impact on price. The ether.fi team and investor unlock plan begins on March 17, 2025, an event that will certainly draw attention from many holders next year, and while the airdrop incentive measures have proven successful in retaining deposits, ether.fi's fully diluted valuation exceeds Lido.
The Bankless analyst team remains bearish on the ETHFI price, believing that given the token's extreme overvaluation relative to LDO, the market will struggle to absorb its ongoing airdrop issuances.
Solana (SOL)
Sector: L1
Rationale: Ecosystem stagnation, may underperform other L1s
