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.

  • crypto will be boring all year with low volatility, we could maybe get a bear rally and then slowly bleed from there
  • opportunities will still be there, but smol and on short time frames
  • jpegs will find some short lived new interest and new tech will be deployed
  • year of decentralized betting 🎲
  • gmx will be exploited in some way
  • web3 games won’t work even this year

Lufo

I believe we will get a slow and boring market for a while until we get one last capitulation. More crypto instances will see a collapse due to contagion from the ftx fiasco. A bigger one could be the trigger for the capitulation. After that some slow grind up into the year end.

I also think NFTs will have another smaller cycle this year. Doing it’s own thing during the bear. Looking forward to some new art categories or technological advancements in the NFT market.

Shaki

  • ETH/BTC trends higher and goes up to 0.1
  • zkSeason never comes / is underwhelming
  • DeFi TVL drops exponentially more on chains that aren’t ETH, “DeFi focused” L1s try to pivot to something else
  • over the year we get a few NFT “hot potato” style pumps. A select few projects catch a bid once again, but it’s temporary
  • p2e / gamefi projects keep bleeding. Many just shut down due to lack of players
  • At least one Tier 2 CEX either shuts down or is found to be insolvent - Tier 1 CEXs are fine
  • Chromie Squiggles get to 30 ETH floor

DBC

  • eth will make 2x. btc will also increase.
  • eth will take #1 by mcap for 6 days.
  • doge will be top 5 coins by mcap.
  • cardano will outperfom the most.
  • solana will survive.
  • mstr will outperfrom coin.
  • digital collectibles term for NFTs will be a bust. We’ll see similar tries but NFT will be used dominantly.
  • phygital term will also not be replaced and most projects will be using it even tho they all hate it.
  • gen-art will receive some love after artblocks drops a token.
  • music nfts and photography nfts will have their season but it will be short-lived.
  • we’ll all age at least 5 years in a year.

Egas

  • ETH never 3 digits again, to end year above 2000$
  • As ETH dominance surges and NFTfi matures, (eth) NFTs will deliver the highest PnD’s
  • Cosmos DeFi and MEV activity to explode, following DYDX and new DeFi chains launches
  • MultiversX/Elrond new super-app “xPortal” to dethrone Crypto.com and all other of crypto card apps
  • A new entry to 1B$ decentralized stablecoin category, probably sUSD
  • Spec mining returns as ZK chains decentralize Provers
  • Yet, ZKs to remain a minor theme, as no utility arises for app-layer in short-term, and similar experience to OPRUs on base layer
  • Berachain, Shibarium, zkSync, and other chain launches to be as underwhelming as Optimism
  • One of these will x10: $ASTRO

Luis

  • BTC and ETH have another leg down and we break 2022 lows, caused primarily by new lows in S&P500. Even with trad. market low, 10-year rate does not go significantly higher than 4.5%, so Macro stops being important to crypto in 2H of year. BTC and ETH rally towards year end.
  • Select NFT collections are better for speculation than select low cap. coins as “institutional” liquidity does not return at all this year (it probably gets worst).
  • Lack of “institutional” liquidity provides a good scenario for Anon funding teams and Anon projects. Out of this comes new genres and ponzis previously unseen, instead of the 10th iteration of existing protocols.
  • Blur airdrop flops in $ terms, and user retention, putting the nail in the coffin for this user acquisition strategy.