The Bitcoin and cryptocurrency markets are unpredictable assets that seem to have a contrarian mind of their own. Once you believe there will be a certain outcome, that is the moment this market loves to eat you up and spit you out without a warning. No market will humble you faster than cryptocurrency.
Once you begin to think you know exactly what will happen in crypto, that is when you are beginning to enter very dangerous territory. That danger is compounded exponentially when using leverage.
With all of that said it is critically important always to be paying close attention to the market and where it is heading. History in crypto doesn’t repeat, but it does seem to rhyme quite often.
One aspect of the crypto market that always seems to repeat or rhyme is that during each bull cycle, there is a new trend that brings extreme hype or FOMO into crypto.
DeFi
In 2020 the biggest narrative was DeFi, and how that was about to completely change finance forever. During “DeFi Summer” these projects went parabolic behind the hype and arguably were even part of the catalyst that ignited the last bull market. However, soon after ETH fees went sky-high causing the momentum of DeFi on ETH to come to a halt.
NFTs
The next hype storm that took over the crypto market were NFTs. Some of the largest projects such as Crypto Punks and Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) would eventually soar in value and even be sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars; and sometimes millions. Celebrities everywhere were joining in on the hype and buying NFTs of their own from the most famous projects. Experts were even declaring that not only were NFTs the next big thing, but they would completely change the world.
But once again the crypto market would begin to enter a bear market, and the hype behind NFTs quickly died down to almost nothing. Another trend that has seemed to come and go in crypto.
Around the same time that NFTs took off, there was another movement that was gaining popularity in this market.
Meme coins
Meme coins have been around for ages in crypto with the original being Dogecoin. While it was nothing new for almost any token, including Dogecoin to go soar during the bull market. We had never seen anything like this. During this period Elon Musk became a “fan” of Dogecoin and began promoting it often as his favorite cryptocurrency. This momentum and unprecedented publicity caused the mainstream to stampede into Dogecoin like we have never seen before. Beginning with a price of just a percentage of a cent, and going parabolic all the way up to $0.67.
But just like other cycles; what goes up, must come down. There was no sector in crypto that was punished quite as badly as meme coin holders. Nearly all of them became worthless, with just the most famous of them surviving. The cryptocurrency market is full of gamblers who are trying to become rich quickly, and for that reason, there will always be meme coins. However, the trend has passed and it will never match the extended hype from a few years ago.
Airdrops
Finally, we have come to the latest trend from this cycle; crypto airdrops. Just like with meme coins and NFTs from the previous cycle, people saw airdrops as the next big thing to get rich quickly.
And for a while, it was. If you used and were active on Ethereum, its layer 2s, and also Solana; there is a great chance that you qualified for several significant airdrops. There is no better feeling than waking up and finding out that you were given thousands of dollars of free crypto for participating in just a few tasks.
But once the word got out about these “golden opportunities,” that is when a stampede rush toward airdrops began. Even worse, their were industrial farmers that were gaming the airdrops to make millions, all while pushing the regular user out of the picture.
Just like most of these hype trends where good times don’t last forever, airdrops soon suffered the same fate. The airdrop scene became overly saturated to a point where real users were no longer qualifying for airdrops. Or if they did qualify, the airdrop reward was barely worth the expenses that they used in order to test the network. There were 3 airdrops earlier this year that finally popped the airdrop bubble.
The first was StarkNet, then Eigenlayer, and finally zkSync. The backlash from these airdrops was severe. Not only were they huge disappointments from the perspective that few qualified, but the project teams seemed to abandon a significant portion of their user base and burned many bridges. Even worse was how they handled the criticism from their user base. Now many other projects are offering “points” for their eventual airdrop, but the investors have been spurned and they have moved on.
Things Will Be Different in Crypto.
With airdrops coming to an end, it also means that the crypto market will be different from this point on. In the past tokens were initially allocated through ICOs, but that changed into airdrops being the predominant method. That leads to the question of what will be the next method.
Each crypto cycle has its new narrative. We’ve gone through DeFi, NFTs, Meme coins, and now Airdrops. The only question is what will be the next narrative? If you can catch it early, it could change your life financially forever.
How about you? What do you think is the next crypto narrative?
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As always, thank you for reading!
