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6 catalysts for the next bull market

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As innovation deepens, another bull market will (eventually) arrive.

6 Catalysts for the Next Bull Market

Original article by Ben Giove

Deep Tide TechFlow

Everything is bad this year. Stablecoins collapsed, hedge funds and lending firms collapsed, and so-called top trading platforms exploded. There's no hiding it: 2022 was a rotten year for cryptocurrencies.

Amid the chaos, however, the industry moved on. Believe it or not, there are many reasons to be optimistic about the future.

That may sound like an expectation today...... However, as innovation continues to deepen, another bull market will (eventually) arrive. Moreover, the biggest bombshells of the year have all been the collapse of centralized entities, and to this day, the value proposition of decentralized technologies has never been clearer.

I still think cryptocurrencies will take a long time to recover, but here are some early ideas that I think could catalyze a whole new cryptocurrency bull market.

推动下轮牛市出现的 6 个催化剂

1. BTC acts as a hedge for legal currency

For cryptocurrencies to experience another bull market in 2017 and 2021, Bitcoin and Ethereum will once again have to lead the way. These two major currencies make up 55% of the total cryptocurrency market cap, and there are a number of reasons why investors might be seeing renewed interest in them.

In the case of Bitcoin, the excitement around the asset continues to stem from its role as a hedge against geopolitical risk and the diminished credibility of central banks. The world faces tragic geopolitical risks, such as the ongoing war in Ukraine, tensions between China and the United States, and political polarization and instability in many countries around the world.

The credibility of central banks, such as the Federal Reserve, has never been lower because they have been slow to respond to the inflation they have created, exacerbating their reckless printing of money.

This uncertainty sets the stage for a Renaissance in assets such as BTC, as investors are likely to seek non-sovereign assets to store their wealth in these turbulent times.

2. ETH as Internet bond

ETH is another asset poised to benefit from the new interest in cryptocurrencies as an alternative to fiat money.

Not only is ETH a store of value with an issue rate that is expected to deflate at the slightest uptick in demand for block space, but after transitioning to "PoS "it is now providing yield for investors.

推动下轮牛市出现的 6 个催化剂

This pledged income will help ETH become increasingly attractive to investors who prefer to invest in productive assets.

Of course, its role as a distrustable collateral and index of the on-chain economy remains unchanged and, if anything, has been further strengthened by the string of cryptocurrency disasters of 2022.

3. The DeFi revival

2022 exposed the opacity and vulnerability of the CeFi - setting the stage for a dramatic return of the DeFi in 2023 and beyond.

Despite the failure of centralised trading platforms, lenders and hedge funds, the DeFi agreement had no impact and continued to run its course with no downtime. These unmanaged, transparent, decentralized financial tracks proved themselves to be a solid foundation on which to rebuild.

While CeFi exploded, DeFi's many exciting divisions continued to ship and develop innovative products.

One is liquidity pledge, after the Shanghai upgrade, pledge demand will skyrocket, with many new agreements like Rocket Pool, StakeWise, Frax ETH, Swell and Diva, ready to compete with incumbents like Lido and Coinbase.

Decentralized perpetuals are another exciting area, with agreements like GMX, dYdX, Perpetual Protocol, Gains Network, Rage Trade, Cap Finance and others striving to continue their growth trajectory through 2023, More activity came into the chain after the FTX collapsed.

4. Non-financial (to some degree) applications

Trading and speculation may be the biggest use case for cryptocurrencies right now, but there are many categories of non-financial applications poised to continue to grow, such as decentralized social media, music NFT, and cryptocurrency gaming.

Decentralized social media platforms have been one of the growth points in a bear market.

The expansion of the user base of platforms like Lens and Farcaster has only grown, and the recent Twitter turmoil only proves the virtues of censor-resistant social networks that provide users with ownership and portability over their audiences.

5. Music NFT

Music NFT has begun to emerge as a new way for artists to make money.

Artists, especially smaller ones, can earn far more from selling NFT to a small number of followers than they can from streaming on platforms such as Spotfiy, where middlemen capture the vast majority of the value created.

While the community and market remain niche, music NFT platforms like Sound have seen strong growth in key KPIs such as volume, audience and casting in recent months.

6. Crypto games

The mind-boggling nature of play-for-money games like Axie Infinity and the subsequent decline may have polluted the space for many, but GameFi remains another incredibly exciting area of crypto.

The intersection of blockchain and NFT with gaming has tantalizing potential, with hundreds of millions of venture capital dollars pouring into the sector over the past year.

Given the intellectual and financial capital flowing into the industry, I think it's more a matter of when, rather than if, crypto games become a hit.

Keep hope alive

Out with the old, in with the new. With prices falling and projects going bust, the seeds of the next bull market have been planted. Although we may not see it now, there are plenty of reasons to be optimistic and hopeful about the future.

It may take some time, but between the resurgence of BTC and ETH, the resurrection of DeFi, and the rise of Web3 social, music NFT and crypto games, there are plenty of reasons to believe crypto will return to its peak.