Cryptocurrency predictions for 2025 from various institutions have been released one after another. Did they get it right last year?

12-27

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Author: Scof, ChainCatcher

Editor: Nianqing, ChainCatcher

Time to grade assignments - this article will take you through a one-stop review of the hot predictions and actual performance of the crypto industry in 2024, and see how many of the predictions made by top research institutions like Binance Labs, Coinbase Venture, a16z, Messari, and Pantera Capital were actually realized last year. After all, their predictions for this year have already been released.

Prediction is a battle of intelligence and vision, and the market gives the answer with ruthless reality. Get ready, let's take a look at the crypto world this year!

❌ Represents that the prediction is wrong or not entirely correct

☑️ Represents that the prediction is correct

⭕️ Represents not entirely accurate, with room for discussion

Binance Labs

2024 Predictions:

⭕️ The Bitcoin narrative is still at the forefront, and the Ordinals and BRC-20 ecosystems are expected to further develop

☑️ Decentralized physical network infrastructure (DePin) continues to develop

☑️ Decentralized social media (DeSoc) continues to develop

☑️ Increased integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

☑️ Growth of Real-World Assets (RWA)

❌ Liquidity management and request-for-quote (RFQ) systems thrive

☑️ More institutions join the crypto space

☑️ Account abstraction becomes more important

Summary:

Overall, the market in 2024 validated most of Binance Research Institute's predictions, especially the trends of AI integration, institutional participation, and tokenization of real-world assets. Although Ordinals and BRC-20 had a good start in the early 2024, they did not develop as imagined as Bitcoin price kept hitting new highs, but were instead forgotten in the sector rotation and fell into stagnation. In addition, the "further development" of decentralized social media (DeSoc) is to some extent a fact, with the rise of new stars like Farcaster, UXLINK and CyberConnect, as well as the fall of Friend.Tech. Compared to other sectors, the development of the decentralized social sector still faces many controversies and challenges.

Coinbase Venture

2024 Predictions:

☑️ Bitcoin continues to dominate the market, with institutional investment focused on Bitcoin

☑️ Macroeconomic environment supports cryptocurrencies

☑️ Web3 applications continue to develop, bridging the gap between early adopters and mainstream users

☑️ Tokenization and digital asset digitization attract traditional financial institutions

☑️ The rise of Decentralized Physical Infrastructure (DePIN) and Decentralized Computing

☑️ Progress in regulation and legislation, driving institutional participation

☑️ More user-friendly experiences and technological innovations

Summary:

These predictions are largely consistent with the current market dynamics, especially the dominance of Bitcoin and the increase in institutional investment, which have already materialized in 2024. On the macroeconomic front, cryptocurrencies have gradually become an investment target for traditional institutions due to the appointment of the Trump administration and the realization of interest rate cuts.

Coinbase's 2025 outlook has already been released -

a16z

2024 Predictions:

☑️ Technological advancements to improve user experience

☑️ Increased value of modular technologies

☑️ Potential of combining AI and blockchain

☑️ Transition from "play-to-earn" to "play-and-earn"

❌ Widespread adoption of NFTs as brand assets

❌ Maturity of SNARKs technology

Summary:

It is clear that a16z misjudged the development of NFTs this year. NFTs can even be said to have encountered their darkest hour this year, after the peak of brand asset tokenization of luxury goods in the previous bull market. In addition, compared to last year, the waning of the meme craze and the decline of Layer2 and cross-chain bridges have led to a significant reduction in the discussion of project fundamentals and pure technology in the overall crypto market.The widespread adoption of SNARKs technology is facing challenges, but overall, the industry will continue to develop towards more operable, participatory, and diversified directions.

a16z's 2025 outlook has already been released -

Messari

2024 Predictions:

☑️ Optimistic Prospects for Emerging Narratives

Messari is optimistic about emerging narratives such as DePIN (Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network), AI, DeSoc (Decentralized Social), DeSci (Decentralized Science), and strongly believes in the combination of AI and cryptocurrencies, believing that these directions will continue to connect Web3 ideas with the social and technological domains of the real world.

❌ Development Potential of DeSoc (Decentralized Social)

❌ Circle may go public in 2024

☑️ The Rise of DeSci (Decentralized Science)

☑️ Bearish on Ethereum, Solana does not have an overwhelming advantage over Ethereum

Summary:

As an established research institution, Messari has not disappointed, accurately capturing the "AI agent" track that has had multiple eye-catching performances this year, and also showing interest in the DeSci track that was not yet hot last year. In addition, their guesses about Solana and Ethereum as the "king of public chains" have also been strongly validated by the market, with SOL's strong performance this year sparking much questioning of the subsequent bull market price of the Ethereum ecosystem. Unfortunately, their judgment on DeSoc was slightly off from the actual situation, as DeSoc failed to replicate the heat of the "DeFi Summer" in 2022.

Messari's 2025 outlook has already been released -

《OKX Ventures 2024 Outlook: Key Projects and 7 Major Predictions》

《OKX Ventures 2024 Bitcoin Outlook Report》

2024 Predictions:

⭕️ BTC scaling and application explosion, on-chain activity enhances network security

☑️ Ethereum Cancun upgrade improves Layer2 usability, leading the industry forward

☑️ Altlayer1 ecosystems represented by Solana will benefit from industry recovery

☑️ AI narrative closely integrates with Web3 technology, new applications emerge

❌ New paradigm of blockchain gaming, FOCG (Fully Onchain Game) breakthrough

☑️ DePIN continues to maintain high growth

☑️ Macroeconomic environment improves, entering a new era of crypto

Summary:

Looking at the overall performance this year, OKX Venture's expectations for blockchain gaming were still too optimistic, and the FOCG paradigm projects did not see significant growth, with GameFi still only shouting the "easiest to attract traffic" slogan without obvious user growth. In addition, the performance of DePIN projects this year can only be described as passing, with some noteworthy projects, but the volatility of profitability and potential privacy issues are still two major challenges to be solved. Overall, how to attract more users from Web 2 to participate in the Crypto field still has a lot of research space.

OKX Venture's 2025 outlook has already been released -

Blockworks

2024 Predictions:

☑️ The Rise of Solana:

Solana's market cap may approach or even surpass Ethereum, and will generate significant wealth effects in the NFT and DeFi sectors.

Multiple airdrops and at least ten unicorn companies will emerge within the Solana ecosystem.

☑️ The Evolution of Ethereum:

Ethereum's developer activity and connectivity will further improve, and the narrative will shift from "hyper-fast money" to other directions.

Ethereum's L2 technology will see some development, but interoperability issues may still not be resolved in 2024.

❌ The Prosperity of the NFT Market:

NFTs will see growth due to wealth effects and capital inflows, with some series (such as Mad Lads) potentially reaching a floor price of $100,000 per piece.

JPEG investments will become an important trend in the first and second quarters of 2024.

☑️ The Revival of Bitcoin:

The launch of Bitcoin's L2 will drive the activity of DeFi and other ecosystems, potentially breaking historical highs.

Bitcoin ETFs may be approved in early 2024, but their market impact is still unclear.

☑️ The Future of DeFi:

The Solana and Ethereum ecosystems will see new DeFi projects and activities.

The popularity of Staking may bring security and vulnerability issues.

☑️ Artificial Intelligence and Cryptocurrencies:

AI-related tokens will reach a frenzy peak in 2024, with a market cap potentially exceeding $100 billion.

The Linkage between Cryptocurrencies and Traditional Markets:

❌ Coinbase will further transform into a bank-like institution, with a valuation potentially exceeding $100 billion.

☑️ The United States will re-emerge as a center of crypto activity in 2024, alternating leadership with Asia.

❌ The Potential of Gaming and Social Finance:

Gaming will become an important catalyst for retail crypto participation. Social finance and music NFTs may become new market hotspots.

Blockworks's 2025 outlook has already been released -

《Blockworks Co-founder's 27 Predictions for 2025: The US Becomes a Crypto Center, Base Will Be Solana's Main Competitor》

Summary:

Blockworks' predictions for the 2024 crypto market have been partially validated. The strong rise of Solana is indeed in line with the prediction, with its market cap significantly increasing and bringing wealth effects in the meme sector. However, the prediction that Solana's market cap would approach or surpass Ethereum has not yet been realized.

Although the NFT market showed some signs of recovery in the second half of the year, the expected "JPEG wave" did not materialize as hoped, with only a few high-end NFT series successfully attracting more attention. AI-related tokens did trigger a wave of hype, but the valuations of many tokens still appear to be overly high, and the integration of AI and Crypto is currently more like a financing method, still far from real technological implementation. In addition, while DeFi activity has increased, the security issues related to Staking have not erupted as expected, and the technological maturity still needs more time to be further validated.

IOBC Capital

Related Reading: 《IOBC Capital: 10 Predictions for 2024》

2024 Predictions:

☑️ The approval of a Bitcoin spot ETF may bring in over $30 billion in incremental capital

❌ The total market cap of the Filecoin ecosystem may reach $20 billion+, but only the truly Fair Launch top MEME projects have medium-to-long-term consensus

☑️ Bitcoin Layer2 will see rapid development, benefiting Bitcoin ecosystem application-oriented Infra

❌ Ethereum Layer2 TVL may surpass Ethereum Layer1, potentially reaching $100 billion+

☑️ The TVL of ZK Rollup will still be unable to match Optimistic Rollup, but the modular combination of Ethereum Layer2 Components' zk-based modules will tend to be more complete

☑️Layerzero will launch its token in the first half of the year, with the potential to ignite the cross-chain track

⭕️ The new narrative of Parallel EVM will drive the secondary growth of chains like Sei v2

⭕️ The market size of DePIN may grow 10 times

❌ Highly social Autonomous World / Fully onchain games may emerge

☑️ There will be star cases of the integration of AI and Crypto in multiple application scenarios

Summary:

IOBC Capital's predictions for 2024 are comprehensive and bold, but they are obviously too optimistic. The rune market in the first half of 2024 briefly continued the boom of the Bitcoin rune ecosystem last year, but the cruel reality of "halving and halving again" followed closely; Ethereum Layer 2 public chains have not been accepted by users, and the TVL is still far behind the Ethereum mainnet, with the highest TVL of $55.3 billion in December; Layerzero had its TGE in the middle of the year, but the process was also bumpy, and despite the accelerated development of the full-chain track, the ideal climax has not yet arrived; The DePIN track has indeed seen huge growth this year, but the prediction of a 10-fold increase in market size is a bit optimistic, growing from about $9 billion at the beginning of the year to about $25 billion at the end of the year (rough estimate).

HTX Venture

Related Reading:

《HTX Ventures 2023 Annual Review》

2024 Predictions:

⭕️ Trading Innovation: The emergence of mature trading robots and new trading infrastructure has witnessed the continuous innovation of trading mechanisms, implying more dynamic and efficient market interactions.

☑️ Layer 2 Evolution: Driven by the highly anticipated Cancun upgrade, the fierce competition of Layer 2 solutions may lead to major breakthroughs in scalability and efficiency, further consolidating the key role of this track.

❌ Web3 and X-Fi Dynamics: The shift towards genuine Web3 projects (such as the success of platforms like Friend.tech) signifies a more holistic approach, integrating social and gaming elements into the crypto domain.

☑️ Integration with Traditional Finance: The discussions around Bitcoin ETFs and Real-World Assets (RWA), especially the potential breakthrough of Bitcoin spot ETFs, highlight the increasing convergence of traditional finance and the crypto industry, which may mark a new era of market growth and mainstream acceptance.

Summary:

These predictions have been partially verified, especially in the area of integration with traditional finance, where the approval of Bitcoin spot ETFs has significantly driven the inflow of institutional capital, boosting market confidence and gradually accepting the crypto industry into the mainstream. However, the predictions on trading innovation and Web3 and X-Fi have not been fully realized. Although the development of trading robots and new infrastructure has made progress, it has not yet brought revolutionary changes to market interactions; in addition, Friend.tech has encountered an embarrassing downturn this year.

HTX Ventures's 2025 outlook has already been released -

《HTX Ventures Report: The current market is still far from the bull market peak, and will continue to focus on areas such as Meme coins and AI coins》

Bankless

《Six major crypto themes Bankless focuses on in 2024: LRT, DA War, Parallel EVM》

☑️ EigenLayer's TVL breaks through $10 billion

❌100,000 ETH burned

❌ ETH Layer2 shifts towards optimized VM and parallel EVM

❌Solana downtime

Summary:

Looking at the actual market performance, some of these predictions have been realized, but overall they tend to be optimistic. EigenLayer's performance has indeed been impressive, with its TVL breaking through $10 billion, proving that the restaking model has been highly recognized by the market. However, the 100,000 ETH burn volume has not been achieved (as of the time of writing, the data shows that the burn volume over the past year has been 472,000 ETH). Although Ethereum network activity has increased, transaction volume and usage have not yet driven the burn volume to the expected level.

Regarding the development of ETH Layer2, the current focus is still on scalability optimization (such as zkEVM and Optimistic Rollup), and the exploration of parallel EVM, although it has sparked discussions, has not become a mainstream direction, and this prediction has obviously overestimated the speed of technological transformation in the short term. The prediction of Solana downtime has not come true. On the contrary, Solana has made significant progress in stability.

Sector:

Solana Ecosystem

SEC Security Token

Layer 1

Source

Disclaimer: The content above is only the author's opinion which does not represent any position of Followin, and is not intended as, and shall not be understood or construed as, investment advice from Followin.

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