Sponsored by
It’s the 65th edition of the Gems Corner, and today, we’ll be looking at the ultimate question about crypto going mainstream, and other alphas as usual.
As we edge closer to 2025, the cryptocurrency industry is undergoing a transformative shift that’s hard to ignore. We are gradually seeing pointers of widespread adoption, increased usage, and government acceptance.
With institutional investments skyrocketing, governments embracing central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), and payment giants like Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal integrating crypto, digital currencies are no longer a fringe idea. They’re becoming as common as credit cards and online banking.
Let’s see 3 primary pointers from a16z’s State of Crypto Report 2024
Firstly, the monthly active crypto addresses hit an all-time high of 220 million. This is an incredible feat for the industry and a sign of increased adoption. The growth in active addresses can be attributed to the proliferation of memecoins trading and crypto apps (eg: Tap games, Polymarket, etc).
Secondly, government regulation, especially in the United States of America, has been one of the crypto’s major bottlenecks to adoption. But with the US upcoming election in view, Democrats and Republicans are beginning to recognize the opportunity in crypto and the need for its inclusion.
Lastly, with financial giants like Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal now embracing stablecoins, we are beginning to see a steady growth in its penetration. Additionally, stablecoins are now a Top 20 and rising holder of U.S debt. Also, with the way inflation-hit countries are turning to stablecoins, it’s only a matter of time before it becomes a second default to fiat currencies.
Back to our question, Will crypto go mainstream in 2025?
At this pace, it should hit mainstream in 2025. Everything is set: builders are abstracting everything for better usability, regulations are relaxing, and users are interacting. Fingers crossed.
Sponsored by DIA
DIA announces ‘Lumina’, a brand-new oracle network, reimagined from scratch.
Lumina is a trustless oracle network that delivers data feeds for any token, LST, RWA, random numbers, and more to any blockchain.
DIA Lumina is composed of state-of-the-art modular components such as Zero-Knowledge technology, a cross-chain messaging protocol, ETH scaling solutions and more.
The network is permissionless, enabling nodes and stakers to participate in distributed data sourcing, secured by crypto-economic and cryptographic mechanisms.
DIA Lumina’s native Ethereum L2 rollup, ‘Lasernet’, executes all critical oracle operations, ensuring trustless computation and full verifiability.
A Spark on Runes
The rise of Runes in the past couple of weeks is a part of the broader memecoins cycle, fueled by the recent BTC rally and the anticipation for The $ME airdrop.
In August, Magic Eden announced their $ME token, which excited the crypto community. While an official launch date hasn't been confirmed, a test token is expected to arrive in October.
This uptick in activity includes various Runes such as $PUPS, $FRIDGE, and $YOURMOM.
The surge in Runes activity has led to a notable increase in the BTC median feerate. Currently, the average BTC median feerate 5-day moving average stands at 18.410 sat/vB. This represents a substantial jump from the previous average of 7.861 sat/vB to 16.286 sat/vB on Alkimiya.
Out of the ~80 BTC spent on Runes fees, ~45% were traded on Alkimiya to hedge or speculate. Users on Alkimiya were able to leverage the feerate surge and capture impressive returns.
What, then, is Alkimiya?
Alkimiya is a blockspace markets protocol where users can tokenize and trade on-chain resources such as ETH gas and BTC transaction fees. Users can go long if they’re bullish and think feerates will rise, or short if they’re bearish and expect feerates to fall.
The activity in Runes will likely continue until the anticipated $ME airdrop concludes. Drawing parallels to previous events, after Blur completed their airdrop, NFTs across the board experienced a downturn as farmers unwound their positions.
A similar scenario is expected after the $ME airdrop, where farmers will unwind their Runes positions, potentially causing feerates to increase further.
Given these factors, we can expect Bitcoin feerates to remain elevated and volatile for the foreseeable future. Whether airdrop farmers are taking on risk or dumping Runes, the result is likely to be an upward pressure on feerates.
Image of the Day
Bitcoin is now the 6th largest monetary asset in the world. Huge milestone!
Alpha Bites and Tweets
That’s a wrap.
Thanks for reading!
See you next Friday.
Viktor DeFi.
PS: I’d love to hear your feedback and comments.
