Today, the Nasdaq 100 index will include MicroStrategy on December 23, which is a long-term benefit for the crypto industry and further boosts market sentiment.
What does the inclusion of MicroStrategy stock in the Nasdaq 100 index mean?
This means they can borrow more money to buy Bitcoin using funds from American investors.
In the future, more mainstream capital will passively purchase MSTR stocks through index funds, the capital in the crypto space is growing, which will further drive up the price of Bitcoin.
Recently, fans have been asking when will the altcoin season explode since Bitcoin has risen so much! What trading opportunities do we still have?
Referring to the historical BTC cycle of bull markets, there is a simple flow of funds before the altcoin season occurs: BTC → ETH → large-cap coins → mid/small-cap coins → almost all coins start to get hot → bull market ends and enters a long bear market phase.
Sector rotation trends
DeFi track restaking projects benefit from increased risk aversion, with a preference for fund allocation. The DEX sector is seeing an increase in on-chain activity driven by arbitrage demand amid heightened market volatility.
The AI sector's Agent sub-track maintains high attention, with a market size reaching $6-7 billion. The integration of Web2 and Web3 ecosystems accelerates, speeding up the integration of data networks and functional AI Agents with existing crypto products.
Trump's rise to power is beneficial for BTC + defi + rwa
Overall market theme summary
Will the market welcome a second wave of DeFi summer after Trump takes office?
In the current market environment, the DEFI sector has the most prominent application value and is the most complete development track.
From the recent independent market of DEFI projects, including Trump's purchase of link and aave, it is very likely that Ethereum will lead a wave of independent market that drives altcoins, because looking at Trump's purchase of DeFi projects is also an indirect vote of confidence in Ethereum.
Most top DeFi projects in the market are built within the Ethereum ecosystem, and many large institutions still prefer Ethereum, such as Coinbase's Base chain.
Because Ethereum has comprehensive security advantages for DeFi, not only in terms of the level of decentralization of the network but also due to numerous security cases, audits, and white hat resources, which are very important for DeFi and large institutions.
Trump had already started laying the groundwork for altcoins before taking office, and there is great anticipation for the changes he will bring to the crypto space once officially in power, which currently seems quite friendly, with a lot of room for future imagination!
The resonant development of Ethereum and DeFi
-$UNI: As a representative of the automated market maker (AMM) model, the leading coin in the DeFi market.
-$AAVE: Aave is the leading coin in the decentralized lending protocol.
-$LDO: Leading coin in the Ethereum staking sector.
-$ENA: The USDe protocol launched by Ethena Labs provides a stable synthetic dollar for the crypto market, the leading coin in the DeFi stablecoin sector.
$hype = decentralized version of last bull market's FTX + FTT + SOL chain
King of DeFi, King of on-chain buybacks, King of burns
Hype is the only platform that matches or exceeds Binance in liquidity and depth, and Binance needs to immediately acquire a portion of equity or buy coins as a strategic layout. The newly launched Layer-1 blockchain token, which has only been out for a week, is particularly impressive.
The rise of RWA on-chain real asset projects
-$Ondo: Focused on the tokenization of traditional financial assets, particularly the on-chain conversion of treasury bonds, backed by BlackRock.
-$MKR: Uses decentralized stablecoin DAI as collateral for RWA, combined with DeFi applications.
-$PENDLE: This project provides a yield trading protocol, belonging to an innovative model.
Recently, the AI Agent track has performed particularly well in the altcoin market. Unlike the DeFi narrative of the last bull market, this bull market is likely to be led by AI Agents, which cleverly integrate meme culture and technology applications. Recently, multiple AI Agent tokens have performed excellently, for example:
$griffain: Shining brightly in the Solana ecosystem, rising 100 times in a week.
$virtual: Market cap has exceeded $2.4 billion.
$ai16z: Market cap reached $1 billion.
Next year, OpenAI will make a strong push into next-generation AI systems.
Google has also released Gemini 2.0, clearly positioning it as 'AI model for the agentic era'.
They also refer to 2025 as the 'Agent Year', as the financial, payment, and data fields involved with Agents are a perfect match for blockchain.
I think this may trigger a revolution even more exciting than DeFi.
AI agents and AI memes will become major trends in the next five years, with many projects potentially generating 50-100 times returns.
AI agent is the main narrative, far surpassing the metaverse of 2021. Hype will be the main battleground, and if virtual and similar projects are listed, the flywheel will start - new venues, new tracks, new flywheels, new opportunities.
AI agent track
$goat - status similar to BTC meme
virtual and ai16z - status similar to last cycle's eth and sol
game and ELIZA - status similar to dex or L2 in the eth and sol ecosystems
Currently, projects in this track mainly fall into two categories: one is agent platforms and frameworks, like virtual; the other is AI meme types, like goat.
In this bull market, this track may see projects worth $10 billion to $50 billion.
