Top 15 Trends of the Upcoming Cryptocurrency Bull Run

There are numerous trends that most people initially dismiss. However, if you perceive their real
potential and prove to be correct, you can make a good fortune. Here in this article, I want to give
my overview of the nascent crypto industry trends, which I believe is coming soon. I will highlight
ideas for you to think about and draw your own conclusions.

Last February, I had already spoken at the Blockchain Life conference in Dubai about potential
trends in the next bull run. There I just briefly touched on the main points. Now I want to dive
into more detail, especially since after my talk last year, many trends have taken a significant step
forward..

Bitcoin performance
When can we expect the next bull market? Simply put, the cryptocurrency market operates in
cycles, and 2024 could be the year we see anything interesting. The key is that the next market
spike occurs sometime after the Bitcoin halving. The reduction in Bitcoin supply is the catalyst for
the bull market.

The next Bitcoin halving will occur in April 2024. Technical analysis by my AI analysis team
suggests that Bitcoin should be hovering around $72,000 by that month. After this event, by the
end of 2024, I think the cryptocurrency market will start to grow and potentially hit all-time highs
by the end of 2024.
Where will this growth begin?

1 、 Boost of new liquidity from institutional investors. Many banks and large institutions will
allocate a portion of their assets under management to cryptocurrencies.

2 、 Emergence of new projects that facilitate mass adoption and new use cases of
cryptocurrencies. The current bear market lays the foundation for an extraordinary surge in mass
adoption during the upcoming cycle, when a record number of new users are likely to join crypto
space. During bull runs the number of new users of the cryptocurrency set a record pace every
time: it was in 2013, 2017, 2021 and is likely to be the case in 2025. Historically, bull runs have
consistently led to a remarkable influx of new crypto users, as witnessed in 2013, 2017, 2021, and
likely to repeat in 2025.

3、Transition of large web2 projects to web3.

Web3 companies building in Web3

The main driver of the growth will be web2 projects, which will start their transition en masse to
web3. This shift is poised to introduce an entirely new audience to the cryptocurrency market. It
is important to note that such a transition will be gradual and will start by the introduction of
web3 products from familiar companies. A great example is Nike, which recently successfully
launched its NFT marketplace, featuring Swoosh NFT-sneakers that would be used in EA Sports
games.

4) New projects release

Currently, a huge number of projects are undergoing various developmental and testing phases.
Many of them are based on technologies whose potential has yet to be discovered by the
cryptocurrency community (e.g. ZK-rollup, Optimistic Rollups). These innovative solutions are
slated to enter the market around the first and second quarters of 2024.

Now let's deep dive into the trends.

1. Metaverse
Analyzing the data, the growth projections for the meta-universe market over the next few years
are quite impressive.
 Metaverse Potential
Here we can see rough estimates of the market size by 2030. On average, this is 10 times the size
of the entire current cryptocurrency market. Importantly, this data is based on major new
initiatives that are constantly emerging. For example, Dubai has launched an extensive metaverse
strategy, setting goals for the next five years: to quintuple the number of blockchain and
metaverse companies, and in addition become the top 1 region in the metaverse digital economy.
At the same time, we will see the launch of metaverse from big tech companies like Microsoft,
Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Nvidia, etc. Furthermore, we may also see state metaverses, e.g. from
China.

The logical question is whether we actually need a multitude of metaverses and how public and
private metaverses will interact with each other. I believe that only a few will ultimately survive in
this competition, but we will witness the development of a large number of metaverses during
the next bull run.

2. GameFi
This segment derives from the previous one: metaverse.

Many people believe that the GameFi industry in crypto is dead. But they are talking about past
GameFi projects. These are the projects where there were no high-quality graphics, and the
games were often built on a Ponzi scheme model. These games thrived as long as there was a
continuous influx of new money. However, as soon as withdrawals began to outnumber inputs,
there was a significant risk that the game would quickly die out. Many of these projects lacked
graphics and sophisticated gamification algorithms; people were primarily attracted only by the
promise of quick profits.

Nevertheless, if we shift our perspective to the positive side, GameFi is currently attracting record
levels of investment. Even within my fund's portfolio, a substantial number of GameFi projects
are present—practically every fourth one.

Top Game Dapps

The world's major video game developers are also preparing their own projects and solutions on
blockchain (e.g., the recent partnership of Krafton Ventures, the PUBG developer, and Cosmos).
Once again, users were in this industry for the sake of making fast money rather than for the
game itself. So, there is a lot of work ahead: building proper tokenomics and AAA graphics in
games, addressing the gamification issue so that gamers play for fun and enjoyment rather than
just to earn money. When this issue is resolved, the project stands a high chance of experiencing
growth and maintaining a long life cycle.

Through the life cycle many popular games have gone down in history, some have been modified,
like CS: GO and CS 1.6. FIFA releases a new version of the game every year with new game
mechanics and gameplay. But most games after 3-5 years go away and lose their former glory.

I will be glad if we can invest in GameFi projects that will be at the top for decades. However, I
won't delude myself into thinking that games will last forever. I am confident that one of the
upcoming mass adoption cycles will emerge through GameFi, bringing new users into the
cryptocurrency industry. Consequently, we will witness a more profound intersection between
the videogames and cryptocurrency industries.

3. Fan tokens
First and foremost, I believe that their era has not yet arrived. It currently lacks any significant use
cases. However, if we consider BNB, it allowed to reduce the commission on the Binance
exchange only back in 2017. Now, it has transformed into a vast ecosystem.

Presently, a large number of sports teams worldwide have launched their fan tokens, each with
its own dedicated audience. Imagine when these teams establish an ecosystem of services, goods
and fan tokens.

Fan Tokens
Let me share an illustrative story. I'm one of those who bought CHZ token at the very early stages.
My primary business is [Link] agency, where we aid various crypto projects in getting listed
on exchanges. Several years ago, my team noticed the emergence of the first fan tokens from
soccer clubs PSG and Juventus and I asked them to write teams of these tokens and propose
listings, as they were added only on an unknown platform called Chiliz. The response of project
teams was something like this: "Thanks for the offer. We would love to start working with you,
but we don't understand anything about crypto and we don't want to have separate teams to
interact with it. Our focus is on the football business, and everything related to crypto and tokens
is Chiliz's responsibility."

When I received this response, I became immediately excited. This was it—a potential gold mine
in its early stages that could drive mass adoption. I invested heavily in Chiliz tokens, as well as
PSG, BAR, JUV, and a bunch of tokens from other clubs. These tokens were only traded on Chiliz
and didn't have a presence elsewhere. During the last bull run, I partially cashed out with around
x60 return. However, honestly, the fan tokens didn't quite live up to their potential as I had
initially believed they would grow even further.

It's a story of a necessity of strong integration between fan tokens and sports teams, not limited
to just football clubs—for example, Formula 1 (the Alpine racing team has a successful
partnership with Binance). Sooner or later, new use cases will likely emerge for these tokens.

During the current bear market, I spent a considerable amount of time analyzing the
performance of existing fan tokens, especially those that experienced the most significant
declines. I identified major undervalued fan tokens with low market capitalization and limited
trading volume. Acquiring them was a time-consuming process because even minor purchases
had a noticeable impact on the tokens' growth.

I've now reached a point where my portfolio includes a significant number of fan tokens, and I
own a substantial percentage of the some of circulating tokens. Which ones, you ask? I might
create a special article later in which I'll reveal my choices and explain the reasons behind it,
(maybe, at the end of the next bull run). However, please note that I could make mistakes, so I'm
not providing financial advice.

The further integration of fan tokens and the emergence of their real-world use cases will likely
contribute to additional mass adoption and the entire cryptocurrency sector. While most of these
fan tokens will likely remain as tokens, some of them may be hidden gems even at this moment.

4. NFT
 NFT Collection Launches

First of all, NFTs are high-risk assets, and they are the ones that have suffered the most during the
bear market. The main problem here is that most collections lack trading volume on the
secondary market. It is just after a couple of months, a NFT drop loses volume, and people end
up merely collecting it.

This issue can be attributed to the absence of well-thought-out use cases for such NFTs and the
authors' lack of long-term plans. In my opinion, the potential of NFT technology remains largely
unrealized. The next significant growth in the NFT market will likely come from brands and the
music industry adopting NFTs, as seen in the recent example of Nike. Furthermore, we are
witnessing the development of the technology itself, with the introduction of new NFT standards
(such as ERC-6551, Ordinals, and BRC-721e), the emergence of the NFT loan market, the
expansion of NFTs to more networks, and the rise of large projects like the BAYC ecosystem,
which includes offerings like Otherdeed and the metaverse.

5. DeFi

If you examine the charts, you can see that the amount of blocked funds (TVL) in DeFi is already
roughly equal to the amount of funds in a large US bank.

Decentralized Finance Market

In the upcoming bull run, I anticipate the amount of locked funds in DeFi will grow significantly.
And the protocols themselves will be more secure. New versions of multichain services and
lending protocols will also emerge. We will witness more deeply integrated decentralized
protocols on the market that also interact with real assets.
[Link] Methods of Fundraising

Methods of Fundraising
It’s clear that the most common method for fundraising is through vc, but this has not always
been the case. We witnessed the era of ICOs, where all you had to do to raise funds was create a
website and run advertisements. Then came the era of IEOs on cryptocurrency exchanges,
followed by launchpads and various types of IDOs.

It's challenging to predict what the next way of fundraising will be, but I personally anticipate the
emergence of a new automated fundraising methods.

7. Tokenization of real world assets

I spoke about the fact that this trend would not emerge until at least 2025 back in 2018, during
my speech at Blockchain Life. My company has been in communication with leading players in
the asset tokenization market throughout these years. Nevertheless, we've observed that many
large companies are still not prepared, but they are experimenting with the tokenization of
individual subsidiaries. They are taking these subsidiaries to smaller exchanges to test how it
functions.
 Tokenization of Assets

At the same time the tokenization of properties, hotels, and similar assets is not yet viable. There
are no significant success stories. Frequently, individuals approach me with requests like, "We
have a hotel in Montenegro, and we want to conduct a sale or tokenize it." We attempt to explain
that there are no successful cases yet, especially no secondary market. For instance, if you
acquire a token representing a real estate property e.g. in Bulgaria, where can you sell it, and
who would be interested in buying it? The market is not ready. However, the tokenization of real
world assets is likely to commence in the next few years during the next bull run due to the
development of existing projects like Centrifuge, Ondo, Maple Finance, new solutions and the
overall market maturity.

8. DAO
DAO, as a project management mechanism is the future, but its full potential has yet to be
realized. Once convenient tools for adapting and implementing DAOs, as well as fine-tuned
mechanisms for managing large organizations, are successfully implemented, they will be able to
show an incredible popularity growth. That is why our fund's portfolio also includes a DAO
constructor, and we are very actively monitoring this industry.
 Leading DAOs by Category
DAO provides a completely different experience within the cryptocurrency industry. Its
participants are in constant search for new solutions and governance models. Therefore, the
exponential growth of DAO can happen at any moment, and it will undoubtedly happen before
the end of the next bull run. By then, our fund will need to select the most promising projects in
this direction.

9. AI + web3
Artificial intelligence is already present in crypto space. Projects that are based on AI and offer
services that are necessary and convenient for people will likely experience significant growth in
the next bull run.

I also discussed the topic of AI in crypto in my speech this February, and less than a month later
we saw the emergence of many new projects related to AI. Not long ago, everyone saw the active
growth of AGIX, the token of SingularityNET, a decentralized platform for artificial intelligence
algorithms. Since then, many similar projects have been launched.

At [Link], we are actively researching and engaging with such projects. In March alone, we
contacted more than 350 new projects. Unfortunately, there are many projects attempting to
raise funds on the AI hype wave, despite having nothing substantial behind them. It's shocking to
see that some lesser-known funds are chasing after these projects, hoping for huge gains, even
though they are fully aware that these projects lack substance.

Unfortunately, the market is overcrowded with many such shady projects, and these tokens are
no different from meme tokens, except for the AI prefix.

10. Crypto wallets

I've been talking about this trend since the first TWT airdrop back in 2019. A close friend told me
to pay attention to it then. I figured out how and for what and after that I started to talk about
the prospect of this token on all fronts.

Crypto Wallets
Next, I started tracking the performance of wallet tokens. But the impulse for capitalization
growth will come from a deeper integration of crypto-wallets with services like Telegram or
WhatsApp. In the case of Telegram, it is already there now, but not at such a deep level of user
interaction. In addition, the popularity of the cryptocurrency wallet trend will be influenced by
the entry of the Metamask wallet token into the market.

11. Widespread crypto payments

One of the main outcomes of the next bull run and the rise of mass adoption should be that in
many countries we will be able to pay with crypto for everything around us: from hotels, to food
in supermarkets. Many payment services for goods, airline tickets will also add cryptocurrency as
a means of payment. It is partially possible to do this now, but you have to look for such places.

12. Industry regulation

We are used to the cryptocurrency industry being constantly debated by legislative bodies.
However, recently there was a breakthrough in global crypto regulation: the Markets in Crypto-
Assets (MiCA) was adopted by the European Parliament. As a result, the EU jurisdiction has
become much more attractive for cryptocurrency companies against the backdrop of recent
developments in the US. I am sure that MiCA can become a model of cryptocurrency market
regulation for other countries and jurisdictions as well.

At the next bull run we will see the proper regulation of the crypto space and permitting the use
of cryptocurrencies as a means of payment. Countries that will slow down this process risk being
left far behind.

13. L2 and other scalability solutions

L2 solutions are protocolsthat increase the throughput of Tier 1 blockchains by executing off-
chain transactions. They are built on top of Tier 1 blockchains (like Optimism and Arbitrum on top
of Ethereum) and are designed to provide high throughput and efficiency.

L2 solutions
A lot of new L2s have sprouted up in the last couple of years (and even first L3 solutions have
emerged). Arbitrum, Optimism, zkSync and StarkNet are the most talked about L2 solutions in the
community at the moment. Dozens of solutions and concepts are now in various stages of getting
investment and development before the mainnet launches. In the next year or two we will see a
whole range of such solutions, launching state-of-the-art DeFi, NFT, GameFi and DAO applications
on them, as well as extending existing decentralized applications on them.

14. Security solutions

I think everyone has seen the statistics on the frequency and volume of cryptocurrency projects
hacks. On the one hand, it is shocking. But at the same time it is a huge market for creating new
security solutions. New smart contract auditing firms, new transaction screening services, secure
fund storage providers and many other solutions are still in the process of development. Demand
for them far outstrips supply. An even greater demand for them awaits us during the bullrun.

15. Airdrops
When I was asked the question back at Blockchain Life 2019 - how to make money from crypto
without any investments - I always said: get into airdrops. Many companies allocate $5-$10 each
for various token activities. Many of these tokens grew quite well in the previous bull cycle.

But at that point, few people were using pro airdrops as a money-making tool. Uniswap with its
airdrop drew very good attention in 2021. In 2022 the topic of airdrop started to develop actively.
And after the successful Arbitrum Airdrop, more and more attention was paid to this topic. For
example, those who had used this network before were awarded 4250 ARB, which was equal to
about $5000. You've heard many stories about the different returns, but I was surprised by a
programmer friend of a member of our fund team. He made over $10 million on this airdrop
alone.

Of course, when you hear such stories you want to run to do airdrop, but these are isolated cases
when projects give a decent airdrop. It is good for beginners. Earning some small capital here is
not bad. Especially if these projects will grow significantly in the next bull market.

I'm sure that in the next 1-2 years the topic will develop and we should especially look at those
projects that have collected money well and can afford to keep the token rate after entering the
market. Projects benefit from being talked about and shown to funds: look, we have a large and
active community.

However, it is important for projects not to get carried away, as they will have to buy back most of
these tokens and maintain the exchange rate by competent market-making. Eventually, projects
may come to smaller volumes of airdrops for more competent work on the price of their own
token.

Another important detail: we are already seeing the development of the very mechanism of
getting on the lists of potential recipients of airdrops. New services like Galxe and Zealy are
appearing to work with community activities, and anti-sybil mechanics are being improved.