While at the beginning of the year many people predicted new imminent highs and ‘supercycles,’ the price performance of Bitcoin specifically, and the general crypto ecosystem at large, has been rather underwhelming.
As it turns out, a deluge of literally millions of tradeable ‘memecoins’ soaked up and diluted the ‘degenerate gambler’ demand, leading to most ‘established’ altcoins sinking like a rock with little speculative demand and inflows.
Who would have thought?
Well, we certainly did.
Many ‘crypto VCs,’ on the other hand, have their LPs breathing down their necks as they allocated vast sums of LP money into locked-up ‘narrative tokens’ which fail to find any demand in the marketplace.
Watch out for the bottom below as locked-up tokens become available and the fund managers have to keep their boat afloat.
They are looking for exit liquidity, and you might want to think twice if that is the role you would like to play.
So, is ‘altszn’ canceled for good? Were the Bitcoin maxis right all along?
Yes.
And no.
While Bitcoin remains the undisputed ‘King-in-the-ring,’ there are indeed a few altcoins which have found product-market fit and have established a market demand beyond pure ‘Player-versus-Player’ speculative demand.
Bitcoin
Keeping it simple, ignoring all the noise, and just stacking Bitcoin with whatever funds you have left over from being a productive member of society has been, on a risk-reward basis, the winning strategy for the past fifteen years. There have been no changes in this regard.
For most people, this remains the recommended approach. Simplicity and patience have generally led to a superior accumulation of purchasing power while minimizing time, effort, and stress when it comes to capital allocation.
Be it Saylor, be it Bukele, or tens of thousands of plebs around the world continuously stacking hard, digital money, the demand for BTC as a stateless reserve asset with superior security properties is expected to remain strong.
Want to increase your stack?
You can do so here (no sign-up required).
Want to secure your stack?
You can procure the means to do so here, including original Bitcoin-only hardware wallets such as Coldcard or the Blockstream Jade.
Monero
To no one’s surprise, Monero—despite various exchange delistings under increased regulatory pressure—has continued on its path to become one of the (if not the) de facto currencies used for internet commerce.
The fact that—unlike Bitcoin and basically any other cryptocurrency—your transactions are non-trackable and non-traceable for outside observers provides a huge boost to its demand.
Having all your financial transactions publicly displayed and broadcasted to the whole world is a major risk, especially as bad actors become increasingly sophisticated in targeting large holders of cryptocurrency.
Privacy provides security, and an increasing number of users think so too.
Monero is clearly one of the few cryptocurrencies people actually procure to use rather than just speculate on its price.
As such, we have seen the rise of Monero as one of the most popular assets to swap on the BitcoinVN platform.
Monero has also become the first staking vault (allowing you to earn a cut of each swap made) on BitcoinVN, which has been “sold out.”
Our users clearly expect the demand for Monero to continue to rise.
Tron
You can hate it (or rather, him) as much as you want, but the state of the ecosystem in 2024 is that the Tron Network—a centralized blockchain operated by Justin Sun-affiliated organizations—is likely the blockchain that processes the most volume on a daily basis, measured in USD value.
An uncomfortable reality many participants in the wider ecosystem refuse to acknowledge.
Yes, Tron is not decentralized.
Yes, its founder and owner, Justin Sun, is known for a whole series of unethical shenanigans.
Yes, if the plug to the Tron server room in Hong Kong is pulled, the whole chain will likely grind to a halt.
Do people care?
No, not at all, by and large.
It is a product that currently works conveniently to transfer money back and forth around the globe and is accepted by basically all of the largest players in the ecosystem, down to roadside vendors in various emerging markets worldwide.
Tether on Tron has beaten out Bitcoin (and any other cryptocurrency, for that matter) in terms of adoption over the past couple of years.
With an increasing number of legislators in the United States finally realizing that it is an extremely powerful tool to dollarize the whole world… While Tron is fragile and has centralization risks, there are strong reasons why “the powers that be” might want to keep the (by certain metrics) most successful financial network of the past decade operating a good while longer.
Since every transfer on the Tron Network requires a small amount of TRX, there is a steady ongoing demand for TRX.
The price development of Tron has been quite detached from the wider market. TRX does not necessarily swing wildly in one direction or the other just because the overall market does.
This speaks to a stabilizing force driven by actual user demand compared to the majority of other coins whose overwhelming purpose is price speculation.
Need some quick Tron (TRX) to power your USDT transactions?
You can do so here, no sign-up required.
The Tron Staking Vault, which lets you benefit from each TRX swap conducted on the BitcoinVN platform, is currently, as of early July 2024, our highest-paying staking vault with an APR far beyond 50%.
Want to keep your TRX in your own wallet (good choice!)? Our colleagues at BitcoinVN Shop have all current models of Trezor and Ledger available for direct purchase in Vietnam.
SOLANA
Solana is undoubtedly the coin that has captured the majority of the “crypto gambler” mindshare over the past two to three years.
The ecosystem and tooling are rapidly evolving, establishing Solana as the coin and ecosystem of choice for the more short-term-oriented “crypto traders.”
Essentially all of the memecoin mania is taking place on Solana—cheap, fast transactions have allowed Solana to decisively overtake Ethereum in this specific area of the market.
And IT IS a noisy area.
Is the Solana blockchain highly centralized?
Yes, it is.
The hardware requirements are at a level that only the largest service providers in the space can operate them.
Is the Solana blockchain still regularly “breaking down”?
Yes, it is.
The architecture of the blockchain is such that transaction spam is cheap, and the design choice has been made to deal with it as it occurs rather than rely on a transaction pricing mechanism akin to Bitcoin (where transaction fees rapidly increase to painful levels when demand spikes).
Beyond memecoins, Solana has also become one of the most popular blockchains for transferring stablecoins such as USDT and USDC.
Since every transaction on the Solana network requires a tiny amount of SOL, we can say that in 2024, for all practical purposes, Solana is one of the few coins that has a steady demand beyond pure price speculation.
Need some quick Solana (SOL) to power your transactions on the Solana network?
You can do so here, no sign-up required.
The Solana Staking Vault, which lets you benefit from each SOL swap conducted on the BitcoinVN platform, is currently, as of early July 2024, paying out APR of slightly above 30% APR.
Want to keep your SOL in your own wallet (good choice!)?
Our colleagues at BitcoinVN Shop have all current models of Trezor and Ledger available for direct purchase in Vietnam.
ETHEREUM
The original “DeFi” coin.
Hated by Bitcoiners (“Ethereum is the mother asshole from which shitcoins spring” – Saifedean Ammous), it is the original coin (we are not going into the Ethereum Classic versus Ethereum debate in this article 🙂 ) that did away with many of Bitcoin’s original design decisions in favor of higher versatility of the protocol.
Are these architectural choices built to last?
Critics are aplenty, but for the present moment, we have to admit:
Ethereum has made its mark on the “crypto ecosystem” in a major way over the past decade.
Ethereum established the practice of allocating a huge stash of the initial coin distribution to itself (a loathed taboo up until 2014 in the “Altcoin” space) and allowed the launch of random made-up tokens as “ERC20 tokens” with a few button clicks.
Business-savvy sharks saw their opportunity:
For very little cost and with some shrewd marketing capabilities, they could launch a product (the token) for almost nothing and then convince a lot of people addicted to price speculation games to buy said token.
The amount of money that has been lost and made in these schemes is—while not surprising—certainly astonishing and has defined the “crypto ecosystem” ever since.
Like it or not:
Gambling is a human vice that will not go away any time soon.
And as such, there is demand for Ethereum (ETH) which is required to power each transaction on the Ethereum Network.
The widespread usage of popular stablecoins such as USDT (Tether), USDC, or DAI on the Ethereum blockchain is an additional demand driver.
However, as stated before:
Since Ethereum transactions are not cheap (usually $1-2 but can quickly skyrocket to $20 and more), most of the crypto gambling/meme coin circus has moved onto Solana in recent times.
Ethereum is at this point a bit stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Due to its design choices, it won’t be able to compete with Bitcoin in its role as the most secure strategic reserve asset, while it also can’t compete with Solana as the fastest and most dynamic “DeFi” blockchain any longer.
Hopes are put on the approved Ethereum ETF to give a boost to the drive as “boomers” diversify some of their savings into the new product, however, we remain cautious:
It might very well be that Ethereum saw its prime years around 2017 and will from here on out underperform versus “newer, shinier toys.”
An additional word of warning:
Opposite to Monero or Tron, Ethereum price movements tend to be highly correlated to Bitcoin and overall market sentiment.
TON
The newcomer on the block.
If you are not satisfied with simply hodling and stacking Bitcoin for the long term and are looking for “more high-risk/high-reward” investment choices:
While we don’t provide any “financial advice,” if we were forced to take a bet on which of all these coins listed in this article will have the best performance in terms of price in the coming three years:
We likely would place that bet on TON.
TON—the Telegram messenger-related coin—has actually been around for quite a while but was stuck in its initial years in lengthy lawsuits, and hence the marketing and business development were essentially put on hold.
This has been over since 2023, and the team of Pavel Durov and the Telegram crew, which has a strong track record of delivering, has taken on the task “to make TON a thing.”
Over the past couple of months, a whole array of initiatives has been launched to make TON usable right from the Telegram app.
The huge distribution platform available to the TON team (essentially all the “crypto native” people are users of Telegram) and the track record of fast iteration and delivery of features users want by the Telegram team make this a play not to be ignored.
Just several weeks back, Pavel Durov announced the official launch and partnership of the world’s leading stablecoin, Tether, on the TON blockchain; quickly becoming the blockchain with the sixth-highest balance of issued Tether tokens and on the pathway to reach at least rank four by 2025 at the latest (and maybe more).
Yes, TON is another highly centralized play, and if Telegram for some reason “goes down in flames,” so in all likelihood does TON.
But as long as Telegram remains as popular as it has been for the past decade and Durov keeps up with his past track record:
TON will likely make its mark felt in the years ahead in the crypto ecosystem.
The TON Staking Vault, which lets you benefit from each TON swap conducted on the BitcoinVN platform, is currently, as of early July 2024, paying out APR of slightly above 25% APR.
…how about my specific coin??
Yes, we are aware that there are other cryptocurrencies out there with a comparatively high ratio of actual users and builders versus speculators.
Most of them emerged in the early days, which were filled with more principles rather than just “does-this-thing-make-me-rich-quick” vibes.
Among those are certainly “fork coins” such as Bitcoin Cash (BCH), which has a surprisingly high usage on BitcoinVN, Ethereum Classic (ETC), or “OG Altcoins” like Dash.
However, compared to the other five coins mentioned above, they have failed in recent years to gain much reach, traction, and attention beyond their specific communities.
Might this change one day?
Maybe.
By all we can go by, however, it has been rather unlikely that a coin/token, once it has lost mindshare, can make a grand comeback and reverse the long-term trend in terms of attention paid to the ecosystem by the global audience.
Buy it if you like the principles it stands for, but also be aware that those principles will likely result in a continued loss of purchasing power measured against the “Bitcoin standard,” against which the industry is benchmarked.
