Mint Ventures Research Partner: Preparing for the bull market to rise, my thoughts on the current cycle

Original author: Alex Xu, Research Partner at Mint Ventures

Introduction

Last week, BTC completed its move up to its all-time high against the U.S. dollar, which means we have entered the official stage of this bull market. Compared with the rebound and recovery starting from the bottom of the bear market, the sentiment in the official stage of the bull market will further heat up and the fluctuations will be more intense.

The official stage of each bull market has some common characteristics, such as:

• Gradually transitioned from BTC leading the rise to altcoins leading the rise, and Bitcoin’s market share declined
• The growth rate and range of various currencies are more violent
• Become the darling of social media and search engines, and public attention is rapidly increasing

The author of this article attempts to logically deduce the possible differences between this cycle and past cycles, and proposes his own thinking and coping strategies.

This article is the author's staged thinking as of the time of publication. It may change in the future, and the views are highly subjective. There may also be errors in facts, data, and reasoning. Please do not use it as an investment reference. Comments and discussions from peers are welcome. .

The following is the main text.

Drivers of the Crypto Bull Market and the Alpha Track

Bull market drivers

After the market value of BTC reaches a certain size, looking back on the past three cycles, the bull market was driven by multiple factors, including:

• BTC’s halving (expected supply and demand adjustment), this round of halving will occur in April
• The easing or easing expectations of monetary policy, the market has reached a consensus that the high point of interest rates has passed, and there are high expectations that interest rates will begin to decrease in the next quarter.
• Relaxation of regulatory policies. This cycle is reflected in the update of US accounting standards, crypto assets can be reflected in the financial statements of listed companies at fair value, and the SEC's defeat against Grayscale led to the adoption of ETFs.
• New asset model and business model innovation

This bull market already has the first three of the above four points.

The Alpha track of each bull market

At the same time, in every bull market cycle, the biggest increases are the new species that were born (or broke out for the first time) in that cycle. For example, in the bull market ICO in 2017, the ones that rose the most were ICO platforms (smart contract public chains) such as Neo. , Qtum, etc.; in the 2021 bull market, Defi, Gamefi & Metaverse, and NFT assets have gained the most. 2020 is the first year of Defi, and 2021 is the first year of NFT and Gamefi.

However, since the development of this bull market, there is still no new asset model or business model with similar weight as smart contract platforms and Defi in the previous two bull market cycles.

**The current Defi, Gamefi, NFT, and Depin, whether they are new or old projects, their product forms and narratives have not evolved much compared to the previous round. They are more about iteration and repair of product functions. To put it simply, they are all It's an "old concept". **

The relatively new species that have appeared in this cycle are mainly two:

• BTC Ecology: Inscription assets represented by ORDI and NodeMonkey, as well as second-tier projects based on BTC L2
• Web3 AI projects: including distributed computing power projects that already existed in the previous cycle (Akash, Render network), as well as emerging AI projects in this round such as Bittensor (TAO)

But strictly speaking, AI is not a native track of the currency circle. Web3’s AI track is more the result of the penetration of the AI craze started by GPT in 2023 into the encryption industry. It can barely be regarded as a "new species" for half of this cycle. ".

The deduction and strategy of this bull market

Alpha trackers who may have been misjudged

In many bull market investment portfolio recommendations that the author has seen, Gamefi, Depin, and Alt coins (altcoins) from the Defi track are put into the asset pool. The main reason is that they are crypto assets with smaller market capitalization and greater flexibility. In the official stage of the bull market (after BTC reaches a new high), it can significantly outperform BTC and ETH and achieve Alpha gains.

However, as the author mentioned earlier, “In every bull market cycle, the strongest gains are the new species that were born (or broke out for the first time) in that cycle.” Defi, Gamefi, NFT, Depin, etc. do not meet the requirements of this cycle because they do not meet the requirements of this cycle. The characteristics of "new assets or new business categories", as tracks that have gone through the second cycle, do not expect them to reproduce the price performance of the first cycle, because an asset class can only enjoy the first cycle of its emergence. Huge valuation bubble.

Because when a new business model or asset class appears in the first round of a bull market, the main challenge it faces is to be "falsified", which is difficult in the enthusiasm of the bull market. In the second round of the bull market, projects on the same track faced the challenge of "proving", that is, proving that their business ceiling is still very high and their imagination space is still very large. This is also difficult, because the stories that have been told before want to It is not easy for people to believe again. They are still frightened by the experience of being trapped at the high point of the last bull market.

Some people may say that the L1 track was the "most handsome guy" on the growth list in the two bull markets of 2017 and 2021. Isn't this a counterexample?

Not really.

The market demand for the L1 track in the 2021 bull market has experienced explosive growth at an exponential level. The explosion of multiple product categories such as Defi, NFT, and Gamefi has caused a rapid increase in the scale of the bilateral market for users and developers, creating an unprecedented zone. The demand for block space has not only pushed up the valuation of Ethereum, but the overflow demand from Ethereum has also caused the explosion of Alt L1s. The 2021 bull market is the real first year of ALT L1s. **

And can this current cycle replicate the explosion of Dapp product categories and asset classes in the previous cycle, bringing further growth in demand for L1?

Still not visible. Therefore, the prerequisite for L1s to achieve the last round of gains in this round no longer exists, and expectations for Alt L1s in this round of bull market must also be lowered.

BTC and ETH have better odds this round

The biggest driving force of this bull market is still the capital inflow brought by the opening of ETF channels and the optimistic expectations for this long-term inflow. Therefore, the first beneficiaries of this round are mainly BTC and ETH (potential ETF listing targets). Combining the above views on Gamefi, Depin, Defi and L1, it is more difficult to win Alpha in this bull market. The return-to-risk ratio of BTC+ETH in the main position will be better than the previous round.

So, as BTC and ETH also benefit from ETFs, which one is the better choice?

In the author's opinion, in the short term, it may be ETH, because BTC's ETF expectations have been digested in the existing price, and after the completion of the halving in April, there are no other hot spots for BTC. For ETH, the ETH\BTC exchange rate is still at a low level, and ETH's ETF expectations are gradually heating up, which makes ETH's short-term odds better than BTC.

In the long run, BTC may be a better allocation choice. Generally speaking, ETH is now becoming more and more like a technology stock. Its value lies in providing block space services, similar to a Web3 cloud service project. This market is highly competitive, and it continues to suffer from other block space service providers (L1, Rollup As well as DA projects) and various new technology solutions, the narrative and market share are eroded and squeezed. Once Ethereum's technical route goes wrong, or the product iteration speed is too slow, these will become reasons for being voted against by funds.

On the contrary, BTC's "electronic gold" positioning is becoming more and more stable with the steady expansion of market value and the opening of ETF channels. Its consensus as a value reserve asset against legal currency inflation is gradually gaining recognition from financial institutions, listed companies to Adoption in small countries.

The argument that "ETH's value in value storage can surpass BTC" has been increasingly ignored.

Summary of strategies for this bull market

Although the author believes that this round of over-allocation of BTC+ETH will have a better return-to-risk ratio than the previous round, this does not mean that we do not need to allocate other Alt coins, but we need to consider it carefully when planning the ratio.

In general, the strategies I am currently considering are as follows:

• Higher allocation ratios on BTC and ETH
• Control the allocation ratio on old tracks such as Defi, Gamefi, Depin, NFT, etc.
• There are new tracks in this round that can be used as a choice for Alpha, such as:

Meme: The best medium for speculation. There will be conceptual renovations in each round and amazing wealth stories in each round. Therefore, it is also the easiest category of projects to understand and trigger circle-breaking communication.

AI: New web3 business category, external business hotspots continue

BTC ecology: including Inscription assets, BTC L2, etc. The author is relatively more optimistic about the former, because it is a new asset category that has emerged in this round, and BTC L2 is actually the concept of Ethereum Rollup, which belongs to "old wine in a new bottle"

The cycle still exists, but it has moved forward significantly

**In addition, in terms of cycles, the author believes that unlike previous bull market cycles, the year after the halving was the main rise, the biggest year of the main rise in this bull market should be 2024, not 2025. **

The past BTC halving years were 2012, 2016, and 2020. The current halving year is 2024.

Flush Finance last year compiled a comparison of the income of major financial assets in the past 10 years. The details are as follows:

**In general, BTC follows the rule of "rising for three years and falling for one year", that is, rising one year before the halving, one year after the halving, one year after the halving, and then falling one year. **

In the first round of Bitcoin halving cycle, BTC rose by 186% in 2012, the year after the halving, and 5372% in 2013, the year after the halving. It was similar in 2017, so before the bull market cycle in 2017, BTC basically met the "halving" trend. A small increase before the halving, a big increase a year after the halving."

This pattern began to be broken in the last cycle. First, in 2019, the year before the halving, there was a considerable increase (93.4%, higher than 40.9% in 2015), and then in 2020, the increase was 273%. , higher than the 62.3% increase in 2021, the year after the halving.

The forward trend of this "up cycle" in this cycle is further obvious. BTC achieved a 147.3% increase in 2023, the year before the halving, continuing to exceed the increase in the year before the previous halving (2019) , and before the first quarter of 2024 is over, BTC has already achieved an increase of nearly 60%.

**The author believes that there is a high probability that 2024 will be the main rising year of this bull market. Don’t delay and wait for the big rise in 2025. It may be a safer strategy to increase your position and seize the moment. Instead, 25 years should be our The year of lightening up and harvesting. **

Finally, I wish everyone good luck in hunting in this bull market and return home with a full load.