Today’s email is brought to you by Nektar Network - The Decentralized Infrastructure Marketplace
Learn how Nektar seamlessly connects Operators, Networks, and Delegators!
In today’s newsletter:
🔎What coins will retail investors buy?
📊On-chain alpha
😂Crypto meme of the week
🗞️The latest DeFi news
🔎What coins will retail investors buy?
Retail is finally coming back.
I’m starting to see many non-crypto people who are suddenly becoming interested in this space for the first time since 2021.
Yet my prediction is that the best part of the bull run is still ahead of us and will happen after BTC hits $100k, which is a crucial psychological level.
I can only imagine the FOMO once retail reads the $100k news headlines.
Now, the million-dollar question is the following:
What altcoins will retail investors be most bullish on, and how can you actually spot them before they skyrocket?
I’ll try to answer this question and share some tips based on what happened in the previous bull cycles👇
An analysis of the 2021 top performers
SOL, SHIB, AVAX, DOGE, LUNA, MATIC, ADA, MANA, and SAND are a few of the tokens that exceeded all expectations in terms of performance in 2021.
While the projects behind them are vastly different in terms of tech, there are a few things that most (if not all) of them have in common:
A cult-like community - Especially if we talk about Solana and Luna, these projects had many hardcore supporters who were continuously promoting them to normies through social media posts
Charismatic leaders - Cardano had Charles Hoskinson. DOGE had Elon Musk. Luna had Do Kwon. A lot of people looked up to them and invested in certain projects only because of them
Technological breakthroughs - Not all the projects from the above list excelled in terms of fundamentals and innovation, but Solana, Avalanche, and Polygon constantly innovated through the cycle
These are a few of the main things I’m looking for in projects I want to invest in.
Last but not least, it’s crucial to place your bets based on what’s trending.
In 2021, everyone was talking about the metaverse, and Facebook even decided to change its name to Meta.
This led to a surge in the prices of metaverse tokens like SAND and MANA.
This cycle, everyone seems to be excited about AI, so I anticipate AI tokens to be top performers in the coming months.
Some tips to find future outperformers early
Crypto Twitter is, in some way, an echo chamber.
Indeed, the biggest people in the space are active primarily on X (Twitter).
However, a very large % of retail investors are actually learning about crypto from other social media platforms like Youtube, Reddit, and Tiktok.
If you want to know what retail thinks and what they’re interested in, it might be a good idea to use these platforms as well from time to time.
Moving on, a common myth that I often see on Crypto Twitter is that only on-chain gems will perform well this cycle, while CEX coins will keep bleeding.
I don’t believe this is true at all.
For the average retail investor, it’s still way too complicated to set up an on-chain wallet and start moving their funds from one network to another.
That’s why several dino coins like LTC and ADA were among the top performers a few days ago, as they’re listed on most tier-1 exchanges.
At the peak of the altseason, it’s likely that CEX tokens will pump the most as most retail investors want just to log into their Coinbase/Robinhood account and click buy.
With that being said, the future looks bright right now.
If history is any indication of what will happen next, then the next few months will be very rewarding for everyone who invested in crypto.
I wish you all good luck and see you in the trenches🫡
Together with Nektar
The Decentralized Infrastructure Marketplace
Restaking has been a fast-growing DeFi narrative in 2024, but Nektar’s focus on shared security and infrastructure goes beyond it.
There’s currently one major problem:
While restaking & staking enable networks to borrow cryptoeconomic security, most networks need more than just security.
They need growth, flexibility, and infrastructure tailored to their unique needs.
Enter Nektar - a decentralized infrastructure marketplace designed to go beyond staking and shared security by providing infrastructure growth and tailored solutions
Nektar’s mainnet (Stage One) recently went live, marking a major milestone for its ecosystem.
With Nektar, blockchain networks can seamlessly:
secure their systems
incentivize participants
optimize their infrastructure
use their tokens to drive liquidity
Token holders can enhance potential rewards by participating in Nektar’s infrastructure marketplace through delegation and governance mechanisms.
NET, Nektar’s native ERC-20 token on Ethereum, also went live a short period ago.
9% of its supply has been allocated to an airdrop for active DeFi users, Diva participants, Gitcoin donors, and ETH solo stakers.
On-chain Alpha🔎
Stablecoin market cap grew by $18b in the past 30 days
This is by far the largest 30-day growth in the total market cap of stablecoins that we’ve seen in over 3 years.
It’s a great sign as it shows that a lot of capital is flowing into the market.
Ethena’s USDe and Resolv’s USR are among the fastest-growing decentralized stablecoins in the last month.
Crypto Meme😂
The latest developments in DeFi
SEC Chair Gary Gensler announced his resignation🥳
Hyperliquid is launching its token $HYPE on Nov. 29. 31% of the token supply is allocated to its airdrop
MetaMask introduced gasless swaps on Ethereum
Zero1 Labs announced the introduction of 3 deflationary mechanisms for its $DEAI token and an upcoming airdrop for its stakers from Seraphnet. The team also revealed that $DEAI will serve as the native currency for Cypher, its upcoming blockchain
SynFutures, the first permissionless perp launchpad, introduced its token $F. F token utilities will include voting power, boost for airdrops, and fee discounts. Its ByBit listing will happen on December 6
Avalanche launched Avalanche9000 on testnet, a major network upgrade that simplifies the process of releasing new Avalanche L1s
AAVE and Gnosis DAOs proposed buying Instadapp’s INST token. This comes after Instadapp’s latest product Fluid DEX quickly became a top 5 DEX on Ethereum
Andre Cronje hinted at launching Solidly v2, a new version of the popular Solidly AMM model
pSTAKE Finance will launch a new $PSTAKE staking mechanism today. $PSTAKE stakers will be able to earn BTC by staking their tokens
Brazil Congressman proposed creating a National Bitcoin Reserve
LFJ (previously Trader Joe) released Token Mill, its novel Bonding Curve AMM, on Avalanche
NATIX Network introduced VX360, a novel DePIN data collection device for mapping and autonomous driving
Jito’s proposal to enable a fee switch mechanism for $JTO went live
Sui partnered with $1.5 trillion asset manager Franklin Templeton. Through their partnership, Franklin Templeton will support Sui ecosystem builders
That’s all for this week!
Until next time,
The DeFi Investor
Want to sponsor this newsletter?
Please send me a DM on Twitter (X). I have a sponsorship deck that I can send you.
