This cycle has seen many old players and old "cabbage" feel that the bull market style of 2024 is quite different from 2021, and it is not as easy. The difficulty lies in the lack of native narrative creation, the lack of new "cabbage" entering the market, the influx of high FDV projects to harvest, and the long-awaited "Mass adaption" still not materializing...
However, as Dickens said, "it was the best of times, it was the worst of times." The secret of wealth is often written on the riddle itself.
Riding the Trump bull market
At the moment when BTC was approved for an ETF, crypto assets have become a market dominated by the West. This round, almost all major positive news and narrative innovations have come from Western capital, whether it's SocialFi, DePIN or reStaking. In this "most difficult bull market in history," one only needs to follow Trump and follow Western concepts to switch to Easy mode.
Trump's positive meme
BTC
After Trump took office, BTC was the first to take the lead. Due to the prosperity of 2021, many old players still hope to replicate the previous Alt season, while new players are immersed in the fantasy of "All In on altcoins, lying down to get rich." However, this bull market only needs to hold BTC, and the return has already outperformed the "full of altcoins" portfolio.
Since the beginning of the year, BTC has surged from $40,000 to around $98,000 now, achieving a return of over 200%. The only ones that have outperformed BTC during this period are the meme track and some mainstream public chain tokens (such as SOL, SUI), while most Altcoins have not seen much difference in price compared to the beginning of the year.
Before the election, Trump had been openly and loudly promoting BTC. At the Bitcoin 2024 conference held in Nashville, Trump appeared and delivered a speech of nearly 1 hour, declaring that he "will fire the SEC chairman," and "never sell your Bitcoin." He also promised to establish a national strategic reserve of Bitcoin and ensure that the US will become a global crypto center and a Bitcoin superpower. Trump's various positive policies and commitments towards Bitcoin are quite rare in the global capital market. With Trump's shilling, BTC broke through the long-standing resistance at $70,000 with brute force and achieved a 40% increase in the short term.
In addition to the ETF, the national strategic reserve and becoming a Bitcoin superpower have become the biggest narratives for BTC.
DOGE
Dogecoin, as the progenitor of meme coins, has a deep relationship with Musk and Trump. In April 2019, Musk tweeted that Dogecoin is his favorite cryptocurrency and thinks Dogecoin is "cool." In the May 2021 "Saturday Night Live" show, Musk called himself the "Dogefather" and referred to Dogecoin as the "people's cryptocurrency." Over time, Musk has become deeply associated with Dogecoin and has even become the public image representative of Dogecoin in the public's perception. To this day, DOGE has gone through 4 bull-bear cycles, but still firmly sits in the top ten of the crypto market cap.
Most people hold the view of "the market cap is too large to pull up" and "buy new not old," and have not paid much attention to DOGE. However, DOGE has launched an independent market after its start, surprising everyone with its "rise to glory." It has quadrupled in the past year and doubled in the past month, heading towards $1 per coin.
PEPE
The name Pepe comes from the character Pepe the Frog created by American cartoonist Matt Furie in his work "Boy's Club." The character won affection with its cute image and funny expressions and gained some attention on the internet. Pepe the Frog first appeared in the 2005 comic, and later became a well-known emoticon in internet culture. Pepe coin was issued on Ethereum in April 2023, and after a nearly year-long wash-out, it started to surge sharply in February this year. Since then, it has maintained a market cap fluctuation of several billion dollars.
Pepe, as a meme emoticon popular in the West, went online on Robinhood and Coinbase after half a year of dormancy. Robinhood, as the largest stock exchange in the US, has only had DOGE and SHIB as memecoins, so the listing of PEPE indicates the importance of the US market for PEPE. This is another major positive news for the development of Pepe in the US market, directly causing the market cap of PEPE, which has been maintained at $6 billion, to surge 50% and briefly break through the $10 billion mark.
WIF
In late December 2019, the trend of adding various logos and images to knit hats as profile pictures became popular on Twitter among esports organizations and celebrities. WIF, short for dogwifhat, was inspired by the meme progenitor "DOGE," and also has the characteristics of viral fission with the knit hat.
The path of WIF is similar to that of PEPE, and it can be said to be the junior brother of PEPE. On November 14, the day Coinbase listed dogwifhat (WIF), it surged over 30%, approaching its previous high. In addition to being listed on Coinbase long ago, on November 25, Robinhood also listed WIF, making it the first Solana memecoin to be listed on Robinhood.
PNUT
PNUT is the animal meme that has been shilled by Musk the most in this cycle, apart from DOGE.
The squirrel image of PNUT comes from a squirrel named "Peanut" adopted 7 years ago by an engineer named Mark. Mark often shared interaction videos with Peanut on Instagram and gradually gained hundreds of thousands of followers. But some nearby residents filed a complaint with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), claiming that Peanut carried infectious diseases. Surprisingly, the DEC raided Mark Longo's home without a search warrant and took away Peanut. Mark Longo then launched a petition on social media, with tens of thousands of fans signing. Unfortunately, Peanut was eventually euthanized by the DEC.
After Peanut's euthanasia, Dogecoin condemned the Democratic Party, and Musk also mourned Pnut and claimed that Trump's election would save Peanut. The animal image represented by Peanut is not just a meme of a social media celebrity, but has begun to accumulate "Trump" political overtones.
PNUT had a large number of retail investors "jumping on the bandwagon" due to its early rapid surge, and then went through a 9-day wash-out. PNUT has stabilized at a small level today and shown signs of a rebound.
In the previous "buy the dips" series article, the author provided a detailed narrative analysis of PNUT (《Why is $PNUT the biggest alpha of this round? | Buy the dips checklist》), explaining why PNUT has been able to steadily maintain above $1 billion in market cap, while most memecoins are unable to break through the $1 billion ceiling.
In addition to these memes, there are also DOGE (the new government department established by Musk after Trump took office) and Banana (the logo on Musk's rocket) that are highly related to Musk. For an explanation of DOGE, please refer to the author's previous article: 《How did the $50 billion Dogecoin get Musk into the new US government department?》
Trump-Friendly Enterprises
People often follow the historical experience of the bull market year after year, and the usual investment logic is the "pyramid wine glass" logic: BTC leads the rally, and the overflow funds flow into mainstream currencies such as ETH, and then flow out to low-cap altcoins, ushering in the "altcoin season". Under this round of the "BTC bull market" with BTC being included in the US, the market has belatedly discovered that there seems to be no altcoin season. "BTC has been leading the rally, and funds have never overflowed."
However, the altcoin season does not cease to exist, but has changed its form of existence: the funds that overflow after BTC leads the rally have flowed into the US stock targets related to the BTC concept.
COIN
COIN is the stock of Coinbase, which has achieved a super-high increase of 800% this year. Before the election, Coinbase's stock price continued to rise due to the arrival of the Crypto bull market, and although COIN experienced a pullback in the middle of the year, Coinbase's stock price rose 31% on November 6, 2024 due to the election results, from $193.96 to $254.31. Investing in COIN is equivalent to investing in the β of "US crypto assets", and any good news related to crypto assets will be largely absorbed by COIN's stock price.
In addition to COIN, other US stock targets in the crypto series also have strong positive sentiment.
MSTR
Microstrategy itself is a company that does business intelligence software, but Microstrategy started the "debt-buying bitcoin" strategy in 2020. As of now, Microstrategy has 1.2% of the total circulating supply of Bitcoin on its books, making it the publicly traded company that holds the most Bitcoin globally. Microstrategy's stock price has soared 1000% in a year, far exceeding the return on Bitcoin.
Microstrategy's strategy of issuing debt to buy Bitcoin has caused many people to worry that MSTR is the next LUNA, but in fact Microstrategy's security is much better than LUNA. Moreover, its latest repayment period is in 2027, which is still early for us.
In addition to companies like Microstrategy that rely on Bitcoin, many "small-cap stocks" have also started to emulate Microstrategy's strategy. For example, on Thursday, the fitness equipment company Interactive Strength (TRNR) said that after its board of directors approved the use of cryptocurrencies as treasury reserve assets, the company plans to purchase up to $5 million worth of Bitcoin. After the announcement, the company's stock price soared by more than 80% at one point. Similarly, small-cap companies such as LQR House (LQR), Cosmos Health (COSM), Nano Labs (NA), Gaxos (GXAI), Solidion Technology (STI) and Genius Group (GNS) have also seen their stock prices experience a temporary surge after announcing Bitcoin treasury plans in November.
Western Concept Public Chains
In addition to the coin types strongly related to Trump, the inauguration of this "Bitcoin President" is also a great boon for all crypto projects rooted in the West. Not only will the regulation of crypto assets on US soil be relaxed, but it will also facilitate the inflow of traditional finance capital into crypto assets. Among the coins listed on Coinbase, the first traditional US brokers can access besides BTC and ETH are ADA, BCH, DOT, XRP and others. Similarly, when the tide rises, the water will only go to the bigger buckets.
SOL
Solana, as one of the high-performance public chains that challenged Ethereum in the last cycle, seems to have "half" replaced Ethereum's position in the crypto ecosystem this cycle. In the last cycle, Solana "sailed smoothly" backed by FTX, but after the collapse of FTX, Solana has repeatedly become the target of FUD for everyone, with a low point of only $11. Since September 2023, Solana has ushered in its own trend market. In a year's time, Solana has become the true meme public chain of the entire Crypto with its high performance and low gas, forming a unique gameplay centered on meme, successfully breaking through $200 and challenging its previous high again.
XRP
XRP was mired in the legal dispute with the SEC and market regulation at the beginning of this cycle. In December 2020, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a lawsuit against Ripple Labs, accusing it of conducting an unregistered securities offering through the sale of XRP. The SEC believes that XRP meets the criteria of a security and therefore needs to be registered and comply with federal securities laws. Due to the SEC's lawsuit and the regulatory uncertainty surrounding the classification of XRP, several cryptocurrency exchanges, including Coinbase, have delisted XRP. On August 7, 2023, the court made a final judgment, requiring Ripple to pay a $125.0351 million civil penalty and prohibiting the company from further violating the Securities Act.
However, after Trump took office, not only has XRP dispelled the shadow of regulatory issues, but multiple institutions have also started to apply for XRP ETFs.
In early October, Bitwise and Canary Capital successively submitted applications to the SEC for XRP ETFs. On November 2, 21Shares submitted an application to the US SEC for the "21Shares Core XRP TRUST" XRP ETF, joining the ranks of those seeking to obtain approval for an XRP ETF. On November 25, WisdomTree Funds filed a registration application for the "WisdomTree XRP Fund" in Delaware and is preparing to submit an S-1 registration to the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
Although the SEC has not yet approved any ETF so far, crypto asset ETFs may be approved in batches after Trump officially takes office.
UNI
Uniswap, as the ace application of Crypto, has become the "first stop on-chain" for many people. To this day, it still occupies the largest revenue among all DApps. It has occupied 50% of the trading volume among all DEXes, and has been firmly seated as the leader of DEXes. However, UNI is not in the portfolio of most people, the main reasons being "the market cap of 7 billion is too large, and there is no money-making effect" and "UNI is an air coin, with no actual use".
Uniswap's potential is not limited to being the leading DEX. In October this year, Uniswap announced the launch of Unichain, which is designed specifically for DeFi (see Unichain Hastily Launched, Which Projects Can Rush In?), and the biggest positive news for the UNI token has not yet been released. As the largest DEX in Crypto, the SEC has also been sharpening its knife, wanting to collect protection fees. On April 10 this year, the SEC issued a warning to Uniswap, planning to take enforcement action against the company. The core point of contention is that if the UNI token wants to be empowered, and distribute the transaction fees of Uniswap to the token holders, then UNI will conflict with the Securities Act. If Trump takes office, UNI will not be subject to regulatory restrictions. Its "dividend" nature will lift UNI to new heights.
BASE
Base is a Layer2 launched by Coinbase. Although it has not issued tokens yet, the fundamentals of Base far exceed other L2s. Not only is the transaction experience smoother than the mainnet, but many native narratives also appear on Base, such as a host of SocialFi projects. In the meme track, Base is also not to be outdone, starting to snatch the "AI meme" from the mouth of Solana. Whether it is VIRTUAL, which supports AI Agent batch issuance, or Pump.fun CLANKER on Base, the wave of AI has quietly risen on Base. The author has previously summarized the targets of the Base AI ecosystem in the article "The quietly brewing 100x opportunity in the Base ecosystem, what are the hype targets?". Among them, Clanker has already broken through a market cap of 100 million today, breaking the inherent impression of many people about the ceiling of on-chain assets on the Base chain.
Similarly, there are "old projects" like DOT and ADA, which have too large market caps and are too early.
Summary
When conducting research and analysis, most people often fall into the psychological trap of "the world is only me", looking for alpha that only a few people pay attention to.
From a young age, we are surrounded by too much noise in the voices around us: in traditional education, teachers often pay more attention to students who can use new solutions to solve problems; in martial arts novels, the sweeping monk with high martial arts skills often has his own "secret manual". Influenced by such social habits, when they come to the market, they are also often affected by this "prisoner's dilemma" of "the world is only me".
Most ordinary traders look down on these top 100, or even top 10 cryptocurrencies, and usually go searching for coins with market caps of tens of millions to find "get-rich-quick opportunities". Rather than spending so much energy watching the alpha of various tracks, it may be the most cost-effective way to study the alpha of "Trump".
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