Binance Research analysts outlined eight areas where they expect to see significant progress throughout the year. Bitcoin BTC
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Ecosystems, artificial intelligence, real assets and institutional adoption.
The cryptocurrency market has witnessed a significant rebound in 2023, with a 109% increase in market capitalization amid optimism surrounding the approval of a spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund and a favorable macro environment, analysts wrote in a report released today. Bitcoin regained its dominance, with the overall locked value of layer 2 solutions increasing by 321%. The decentralized finance sector has also grown significantly, driven by innovations in liquid staking tokens and the integration of real-world assets, they said.
On the other hand, in the global stablecoin market, Tether’s USDT maintained its dominant position and its market capitalization decreased by 5.2%. Non-fungible tokens surged last quarter, led by Bitcoin NFTs. On-chain gaming activity doubled in active wallets by the end of the year, reflecting a resurgence in the sector. Meanwhile, web3 projects have attracted 1,173 investments totaling $9 billion in 2023, mainly in the infrastructure sector, suggesting continued recovery and growth potential for the ecosystem this year, the analysts added.
Bitcoin, AI, RWA and Institutional Adoption
Binance Research continues the Bitcoin story in 2024 with developments such as Ordinals NFTs and BRC-20 tokens, liquidity injections from the approval of spot Bitcoin ETFs recognizing Bitcoin as a “legitimate asset,” and the upcoming halving event. is expected to remain at the forefront. Block rewards for Bitcoin miners are cut in half. Although not a direct cause and effect relationship, halving events in the Bitcoin market have often occurred prior to significant bull markets, with the next event potentially less than 100 days away.
Analysts also expect institutional adoption of cryptocurrencies to accelerate this year, “with reputable traditional asset management giants like BlackRock and Fidelity entering cryptocurrencies during the bear market, demonstrating their faith in the long-term potential of the industry.”
The integration of artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency is another area expected to grow in 2024, driven by the popularity of applications such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT. According to analysts, these integrations are still in their infancy, but offer potential use cases in the areas of trading automation, predictive analytics, generative art, distributed autonomous organization operations, and decentralized storage for AI model training.
Real-world asset tokenization has been identified as another topic for 2024. RWA tokenization is gaining momentum due to its ability to bring off-chain assets onto the blockchain, providing greater transparency and efficiency. Analysts said tokenized government bonds are likely to continue to be attractive investments as interest rates continue to rise. “Additionally, as the institutional adoption of RWAs accelerates, the development of related infrastructure such as decentralized identities, oracles, and interoperability solutions is also expected to gain momentum,” he added.
Other themes identified by Binance Research this year include a thriving on-chain liquidity environment, continued emphasis on improving security, driving ownership economy applications such as decentralized physical network infrastructure (DePin) and decentralized social media, and the importance of simplification. Increasing account abstraction, etc. Enhancing the user experience of blockchain technology.
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