Bitcoin Is Ending 2024 on a Losing Streak, But January Looks Bright

Bitcoin’s 2024 looks like it’s ending with a whimper (not a bang) as it looks to close out December in the red by nearly 4%. Nonetheless, there are a lot of reasons to still be bullish — perhaps even more so on everything beyond Bitcoin, according to one crypto fund that’s now up an astounding 1,000x on Bitcoin.

As always, we’re recapping the most important stories in crypto right now that you might have missed during the Holiday break (and you can watch our full episode above.)

Let’s dive in…

Bitcoin’s Biggest Buyer Keeps Buying

It almost seems redundant at this point, but MicroStrategy Chairman Michael Saylor is continuing his Bitcoin buying streak for the 8th consecutive week. This morning, the company announced another $209 million Bitcoin purchase, bringing their total Bitcoin holdings to 446,400 BTC.

That said, the market doesn’t really seem to care about these purchases anymore, and if anything has started to set off more alarm bells about extended leverage as Bitcoin’s price slips 15% from the $108,000 mark just a couple weeks ago. MicroStrategy’s stock is now off more than 25% from its pre-Thanksgiving high.

The bigger factor right now seems to be macro-themed as the yield on the 10-year bond continues to climb and the dollar continues to gets stronger. One point to note on that front is that the market gurus at Fundstrat point out that the last few trading days have shown the weakest breadth for stocks with just 18% of NYSE stocks advancing to close the year. Historically, that has signaled a strong January 75% of the time — with a median gain of more than 5%.

If stocks pop that much, crypto likely explodes higher. As data shows, Q1 is historically quite strong:

Buy the Altcoin Dip?

As Bitcoin retreats, it’s been interesting to see how altcoins have held up relatively well. Some of this year’s biggest gainers haven’t given up as much of their gains as you might expect. For Pantera Captial Portfolio Manager Cosmo Jiang, that’s a sign the second phase of this cycle’s altcoin boom is upon us. According to their analysis, Q1 should be particularly bullish for blockchains beyond Bitcoin.

Jiang, who has become one of the leading fundamental investors in crypto, points to projects that have seen transaction revenues pop this year. He’s particularly attentive to decentralized physical infrastructure, or DePIN, projects.

“There are now Fortune 50 companies paying crypto protocols for their services. The U.S. government is now subsidizing crypto protocols for their services,” he told us in an interview during the holiday. “This is a story that goes totally underreported.”

Fade a crypto fund like Pantera, which recently celebrated a 1,000x return on its original Bitcoin fund, at your own peril. We’re more in the Pantera camp, as our community also spotlighted many of the DePin names Jiang highlighted in our Crypto Project of the Year series.

Terra’s Do Kwon Is Coming Back to the US

After a back-and-forth with Montenegro’s Ministry of Justice and their Supreme Court, it looks like Terra Founder Do Kwon is heading back to the U.S. after the country opted to not extradite the crypto founder back to South Korea.

As Coinage’s award-winning documentary into Terra’s $40 billion collapse showed, the case isn’t as straightforward as FTX’s collapse. After the SEC proved successful in getting a jury to hold Terra and Kwon liable for civil fraud, prosecutors will have their chance at trying their criminal case. It’s another interesting chapter for one of crypto’s most (in)famous figures.

Memecoin of the Week: A Styrofoam Head?

Per usual, things are still getting weird in memecoin land. This weekend, one memecoin project — featuring a man who claims to be taping a strand of his girlfriend’s hair to a styrofoam head every day — caught a bid because someone claimed GameStop’s CEO is the force behind it.

We reached out to GameStop for comment and haven’t heard back — SO MAYBE IT’S TRUE? Just kidding, probably still not. But if there is one thing crypto fans love, it’s a conspiracy theory. So even if that’s all this winds up being, it’s definitely delivered in bringing attention to the project.

The $SS memecoin jumped from a market cap of just $100,000 to more than $10 million after the conspiracy thread went live. Let the record show — we talked about it on the show at the $7 million mark. It’s your conspiracy theory now.

🏆 Crypto Project of the Year 🏆

If you don’t want to listen to the recommendations from crypto investment firm Grayscale (which just added more tokens to its basket of the Top 20 projects) you could always take a hint from our list:

We are now down to the final four projects in our spotlight from this year: Solana, Base, THORChain, and Stacks. Coinage NFT holders can register to vote now on the finalists (and become eligible for patronage dividends in the process.) Not a Coinage member yet? Scoop up an NFT before prices rise in 2025!

Other Web3 Headlines:

• Bitcoin options reach record $14bn in sign major rally is ‘weeks away’

• Monthly volume on decentralized exchanges surges to record high in December, surpassing $320 billion

• AI Agents Capture Attention as AiXBT, ai16z, and Virtuals Surge

Catch all the biggest Web3 headlines and updates at Coinage.Media. Thanks for tuning in, and HAPPY NEW YEAR!

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