Our 2024 Predictions

2023 has been a fantastic year for Middle Class Capital, so hold on tight for some wild predictions for 2024. Before that, let’s have a recap of what our portfolio companies have achieved this year. Steer went live across 14 chains and is already managing 300 pools, reaching the first big milestone of 5M TVL and native integrations with sushiswap and quickswap. Poolshark launched $FIN with an extremely successful bond and is already handling over $500k daily volume on its AMM. ...

December 31, 2023 · MCC

Our 2023 Predictions

Dereek The bottom is in COIN gonna outperform BTC Shangai is gonna cause a 2-3 day caos where the majority of liquid staking derivatives die and a couple grow their market share even more. The net flow of staked eth is gonna be positive (more deposit than withdraws) Maker is gonna baloon up in revenue but the token will keep underperforming US Core CPI peaked and will come down. but won’t go under 4% wstETH contract will hold more than 50% of all stETH we get more than one Gamefi hit in the normie world More widespread NFT adoption under the digital collectibles name Serendipity Gamefi continues to be trash until all crypto notions are abstracted (not happening 2023) Artblocks keeps making more random bullshit: it sells anyway BTC makes another low, but never beyond 12k Crypto continues to be integrated into high-profile websites/services (like reddit); market doesn’t really care beyond temporary pumps in respective coins First modular blockchain stacks with mainnet release; creates temporary ‘modular blockchain’ season stETH plebs achieve sweet, sweet freedom; reflect that locking up your funds for months has a terrible opportunity cost indeed Portugal implements legislation to tax crypto, with mandatory reporting of exchanges to the state for any balances over X minimum amount Trading gets noticeably harder; those without dedication are squeezed out and capitulate Target Crypto overall - less volatile, slowly ranging, but might go lower before going higher. Still some random pumps, but much less gamblers on leverage stuff. Gambling shifts to some nft pumps and dumps, still should be profitable vs eth. Most of nft gambling is on matic. Rest of people are back to fx/poker/betting/gambling x1000 on rollbit Almost nobody uses all those option protocols. More people/protocols getting hacked. Mini zk szn powered by zksync/starkware, mostly pvp Most of Web3 games are mid af, nobody plays them when it’s not profitable Dereek gets 3 more caps. Maestro Bottom of TradFi will surprise most ppl. Crypto already bottomed vs. TradFi. There will be another 10-100x narrative emerge that caught most off-guard. Possibly SocialFi/DeSoc or another x-to-earn Ponzus NFT Finance to do better than most expected. Possibly fueled by Abacus/Guzzolene Blockchain gaming to have few runaway successful cases, esp. in Asia. But still not anywhere near justified the massive funding flew in over the last couple of years Solana to “survive” but half of the core projects will move or expand to other chains. Aptos and its ecosystem will be the major loser over the year. Polygon to be the major winner. Among the L2s, zkSync will be a major letdown and StarkNet token won’t perform well. No “zk-rollup” season until 2024 but applications of zk will be a major narrative within next few years among both application and base layers and it will drag up the likes of Mina as well. Within the year 2023 Arbitrum will temporary leads the Ethereum L2s in terms of traction. ETH to lead the market again leading to Shanghai fork. ETH/BTC to come back to near 2017 high on Q2 2023. Many VCs/funds to close down or move out from the space within next 6 months TopTick Crypto moves so fast that predictions a year out are mostly worthless, and depend on whether or not the bear market continues which requires an attempt at divining the macro which itself is close to impossible. Everyone thinks the coast is clear since we couldn’t make new lows on the FTX meltdown, but aside from 1 month in 2020, crypto has never seen a recession and is now inextricably tied to traditional markets and macro. We get one more pummeling shortly into 2023. BTC & ETH fall 15%+ in short order and alts nuke, but just as everyone starts worrying about Mt Gox coins and staked ETH unlocks we bottom. At least for ETH, it is indeed a bullish unlock as more holders feel comfy staking ETH and amount staked actually increases rapidly. Big Prediction: 1 more nuke into bottom sometime in March/April and ETH outperforms BTC again. People are already frontrunning the trade but as indicated above you’ll get another chance to play alts tied to liquid ETH staking as a levered play on ETH outperformance coming out of the Shanghai hardfork. LDO, RPL, SWISE, hopefully others Demand for ETH yield will be driven by lower interest rates globally and that can only happen in the wake of a recession. If that thesis plays out there might be a follow-on rotation into real world assets and bringing that yield on-chain. Centrifuge is the clear leader with their recent announcement to bring $220 million in RWA on-chain with with MKR. If rates don’t decline, Circle could become an important bridge to bringing short term yields on-chain through USDC. ZK szn is a 2024 or later event (just like L2 / rollup szn took way longer than anyone expected) Gamefi is not happening until it is incorporated in games people would play without any ties to crypto, which is to say it’s probably not happening in 2023 unless a major game studio adopts it. The success of DYDX and GMX is driving the narrative that nobody wants to use crypto options as perps are easier to understand. One need only look at the volumes Robinhod did in 2021 to conclude that even non-crypto degens love options if they have sufficient liquidity and a reasonable user interface. At least one project will figure out on-chain options and see breakout adoption. The best UIs for buyers have been the recent updates from Premia and Hegic. Ribbon’s Aevo will be another project to watch as they launch a mainnet L2 dedicated to option trading, but the space is so nascent the ultimate winner may not have launched yet. Final thoughts: avoid dilutive/predatory token supplies, follow the users, don’t overpay. Other potential takes: ATOM bull case based on getting shared security right and onboarding a bunch of previously orphaned LUNA projects. Balancer ecosystem. FTM revenge pamp with Andre’s return. ...

January 5, 2023 · MCC

A not so Miner problem

In the recent weeks we’ve seen a public purge of overleveraged and underprepared Bitcoin miners. Included in this wash out are some of the largest names in the Bitcoin mining industry such as Core Scientific, Compute North, Iris Energy, Argo, Poolin, and Compass Mining, among others both named and unknown. This is due to the increase of Bitcoin’s hashrate and mining difficulty paired with escalating energy costs, causing a steep drop in miner revenues. ...

November 3, 2022 · cozytrades

The power of Community

The glue that holds a project together is its community. Memes, community projects and die-hard believers are all good signs of a strong community. This is especially important for projects that have “no intrinsic value” and are mostly fueled about speculation, like NFT pfp collections or meme coins. Having a strong community is a value of itself, and it also means a big percentage of the supply is basically locked forever, held by people that will never sell. ...

January 4, 2022 · shaki