The cryptocurrency industry in 2024 opens up a wide range of investment opportunities across its different sectors. Against the backdrop of an easing of monetary policy (MP) by world banks, new liquidity may come to financial markets, which will be directed, among other things, to high-risk instruments, which include crypto-assets. Experts told RBC-Crypto about promising niches in the crypto market.

Platforms and ecosystems

Cryptocurrency market analyst Viktor Pershikov

Cryptocurrencies

It is clear that one of the key trends in the next year will be the increase in demand for Bitcoin (BTC) following the approval of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the United States. This could give additional impetus to the Bitcoin price, in addition to the so-called halving, which is expected in April 2024. In addition, it is worth considering the purchase of private cryptocurrencies such as Monero (XMR) or ZCash (ZEC), as increasing the transparency of the blockchain, coupled with efforts to de-anonymize users, may increase the demand for such anonymous cryptocurrencies.

Platforms

Over the next year, I expect continued growth in crypto platform tokens such as Ethereum (ETH), Solana (SOL), Polkadot (DOT), Polygon (MATIC) and many others, amid the technological development of the sector, as well as the increase in demand for the creation of dApps, which intensified in the second half of 2023.

Layer 2 solutions

Tokens of projects in the Layer 2 category showed weak dynamics in the past year, and 2024 may be the year of additional capitalization of the sector, especially against the backdrop of the planned update to the Ethereum network - EIP-4844. Among the promising projects for next year are Optimism, Arbitrum, Synthetix and some others.



Genuine Optimism. How to make Ethereum faster and cheaper for everyone

What is the Arbitrum project? And why this is the most anticipated airdrop of the year

Non-empty Polygon. How VKontakte, Coca-Cola and Adidas use the blockchain

How the zkSync project is making Ethereum faster and when will it release its token?

This is the base. Why did the crypto exchange Coinbase launch its own blockchain?

Zero knowledge. How ZK technology created a billion-dollar niche in the crypto market

Gaming sector (GameFi)

The gaming sector in the blockchain applications environment continues to actively develop, and here such stories as Immutable (IMX), Enjin (ENJ), as well as young low-cap stories like Echelon Prime (PRIME) and EPIK Prime (EPIK) look promising in the next one.

Real asset tokenization (RWA)

Tokenization and merging of real economy assets with the crypto industry may come to the forefront from a sector perspective next year, and many crypto projects, including popular blockchain platforms, will benefit from this.

Asset tokenization in the crypto market is not like DFA. How does it work

At the same time, young assets may also experience an increase in value against the backdrop of sector growth. For me next year, the tokens of the Polytrade (TRADE) and Clearpool (CPOOL) projects are interesting.

Decentralized financial services (DEX)

Increasing claims against centralized exchanges from regulators, as well as technological developments in decentralized exchanges next year could lead to the growth of tokens such as Uniswap (UNI), 1Inch (1INCH), dYdX (DYDX) and others.

Trading and gaming sphere
Former head of Asia and Eastern Europe at Binance Gleb Kostarev

Exchange platforms

From the perspective of the crypto exchange industry, decentralized platforms that allow leveraged trading, such as dYdX or GMX, will gain more attention in the next year. This will be due to the fact that regulatory pressure on centralized exchanges will continue, and exchanges will be forced to deny retail users from certain jurisdictions access to high-risk instruments. Accordingly, they will look for alternatives for themselves.

In addition, after numerous hacks of financial services in 2023, there will be an increasing demand from users for self-storage of cryptocurrencies. For this reason, hybrid platforms will actively enter the market, allowing you to store funds on the exchange or connect your own wallets and not delegate the storage of funds to the exchange.

GameFi

Despite the fact that interest in the gaming sector of the Web3 industry has subsided slightly in 2023 after the Axie boom, large global publishers with serious projects may come to this direction in 2024. For example, the French giant Ubisoft is planning to launch an RPG game called Champions Tactics: Grimoria Chronicles. Projects like the Avalanche-powered shooter game Shrapnel also have good growth potential.

Tokenization

In addition, many experts talk about growing interest in RWA projects that allow tokenize different types of assets: real estate, works of art, precious metals or company shares. Increasing liquidity is one of the most important benefits of tokenizing real assets. One of the main beneficiaries of the wave of interest in RWA was the MakerDAO project. However, the growth of this sector will depend largely on the regulations that will exist in the future.

Bitcoin ecosystem

It will be interesting to watch the development of the ecosystem around Bitcoin, namely the massive release of BRC-20 tokens through the Ordinals protocol. Now many exchanges are actively looking at listing such tokens.

Launched in January 2023, the Ordinals protocol allows images and other types of data to be written directly to Satoshis (the smallest unit of Bitcoin, valued at 0.00000001 BTC), without requiring a separate token or network fork. Each such record (inscription) is immutable and remains forever saved in the blockchain. This became an analogue of NFTs for the Bitcoin network and provoked a speculative rush, especially noticeable in May and November 2023.

Bitcoin with memes. How new tokens created a multimillion-dollar market

Cryptocurrencies and exchange tokens
Leading analyst of Cryptorg Andrey Podolyan

Market leaders

You should always invest in leading cryptocurrencies. Typically, these are long-term accumulation strategies that produce excellent results over the long term - Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH) or BNB from Binance.

Second level solutions

Layer 2 solutions may turn out to be one of the best investments of 2024. Examples include tokens from projects such as Polygon (MATIC), ZKSpace (ZKS), MetisDAO (METIS) or Loopring (LRC).

Gaming sector and exchange tokens

The GameFi sector is growing rapidly and attracting new players to cryptocurrencies. Exchange tokens can be a successful investment, both from traditional platforms (CEX) and decentralized ones (DEX). New players are constantly emerging who want to take a certain share of the market.