With the btc etfs potentially coming tomorrow, feels apt to share some Q1 2024 thoughts. Pivots this big usually present themselves with a lot of opportunity.
1. The liquidity vacuum that was the btc etf front run trade culminates. No view on direction, bias is flat to down over the course of the quarter. Biggest risk to really all crypto asset prices is demand post etf launch. Also Saylor's purchases should subside (smaller premium, less willing issuance buyers) and BTC will stop trading so invincibly (no sustained dips).
2. ETH is the most asymmetric trade to put on in size. ETH has a fleury of positive catalysts, but market sentiment is at its lows. Throughout the course of this recent rally, the ethereum community has essentially had an identity crisis, exactly what you'd want to see in an asset you're accumulating. Crypto assets evolve into new narratives, these are emergent networks, old narratives are replaced if its clear that a network is providing a different kind of utility. I see no reason that ETH won't grow into something the market wants. Also, Sassano saying he will do better at the stone cold soleth top and santiago giving 80% odds of flippening are quite indicative of sentiment.
Dencun upgrade and the broader parallelization narrative show that upgrades are being done to the evm and the broader ethereum ecosystem. The ETH ETF will draw in new institutional demand and will be front run by the market the same way that BTC was. And the most important driver of ETH's success in Q1 will be the stimulus money that comes from the eigen, blast, and manta airdrops. Think we see $500m in new stimulus money as my conservative case. We know how these new governance tokens do relative to the ecosystem currency a few weeks post drop. These airdrops are just farms to stack more ETH.
3. Re-staking will become one of the loudest narratives in the market, on par with parallelization and data availability today. It will also become obvious that to enter into this new ecosystem, you will need to use LSTs. Think LST growth goes parabolic over the next year, with a big chunk of it increasing after eigen's mainnet launch.
4. Overall supply demand picture for ETH is very constructive. Celcius finishing their sales, culmination of the btc etf trade, and all of the airdrops represent a sizeable decrease in the amount of eth for sale with a commensurate increase in demand for eth.
At the end of the day, a lot of unknowns, but this is how I'm thinking about things going into this quarter.
Primary portfolio is long:
- ETH
- INJ
- LDO
- AI related assets