2024 Crypto Investment Thesis

Welcome to Bankless Takes! This week, the first week of 2024… we have 6 Predictions for the major investment themes ahead for this year.

What are going to be the trends that define 2024? What do you need to know to stay ahead of the game? At least, for what we can see today.

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TIMESTAMPS

00:00 Intro
04:45 Restaking and Liquid Restaking Tokens
12:34 What is Liquid Restaking?
20:26 Solana
28:18 Parallelized EVM’s
37:16 Games
43:56 Data Availability
50:07 Airdrops

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Bank list Nation welcome to 2024 and on the First Bank list takes of the year we have six predictions six investment themes that we think are going to Define The Meta for the rest of the year maybe into 2025 but from what we can see today at least is already setting in place

Some six different investment themes that we are going to watch develop over the years Ryan how’s your holidays oh it was good man I have a little bit of covid so if uh listeners yeah if hear the in my voice yeah a parting present but David I’m

Excited to start 2024 this first episode of the year and these predictions are curated by you yourself or these investment themes I should say so um I’ve gotten a chance to look at them at a high level I think I’m G to need your help to to get us through this do you

Want to get in absolutely and if you’ve been a Content consuming crypto you know that every single content producer that exists in crypto has put out their predictions for 2020 24 whether you’re a writer or a podcaster you have your this is a that is a little bit of a meta an

Aggregator because I’ve been reviewing all of those and also putting my own spin into these and this is also an article that I wrote it came out yesterday on bankless bank.com you can read it at bank list.com 2024 hyen crypto hyen metas um but we will also regurgitate that

Content for you here on the podcast six different ones uh all across the space both inside of ethereum and outside of ethereum uh and so we’re going to get right into all of these metas these six different metas that will Define 2024 but first I want to talk about some of

These fantastic sponsors that make this show possible especially Kraken our preferred crypto exchange for the year of 2024 all year long if you do not have an account with Kraken and you didn’t sign up in 2023 well you have a whole another year to do it so get started

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Community governed protocol this means that cell needs you to weigh in and make your always heard join the conversation in the cell Forum follow sorg on Twitter and visit c.org to shape the future of ethereum so we have six crypto investment themes for 2024 and uh let’s

Take these one by one so let’s start with the first one David all right so last year was a big breakout year for lsts that was Liquid staking tokens this year a major investment theme is reaking and lrts that’s liquid reaking tokens that’s what you’re saying here tell me about this David

This theme going here this theme begins with enan Lair who of course brought reaking into crypto at all now there’s already igen layer kind of copycats there’s an IG Igan layer on bitcoin there’s an IG layer on the multichain but really igen lir itself has kind of dominated The Narrative right in the

Last week or maybe week yeah the week before Christmas one billion dollars of tvl was hit by enan lay uh and the Caps that uh IG has the liquid staking token caps uh every single liquid staking token has a limit as to how much can be deposited into igen layer just as a

Safety precaution keeps getting hit over and over and over again the most recent cap that was raised just a couple weeks ago was hit yesterday wait wait what do you mean by that what do you mean by that so it’s like a steth has a cap of

How much St that that is Li lios um staked eth how much Lio staked eth you can put in igen layer right now and R eth has a similar cap that’s what you mean by by cap and igen layers self-imposing this cap uh I believe just

Because it doesn’t want to grow too fast too quickly it’s still in kind of an early form like call it like a beta type form is that what you mean by these caps that’s exactly right and the caps for kind of the longer tail liquid staking

Tokens are lower than the Lio cap U but every everything that is a liquid staking token has a cap Lio is the largest the next largest deposit into um Igan layer is swell and then rocket pool as well coin base uh but all of these individual liquid Stak token has a limit

On them ether vanilla ether has no limit uh so you can deposit as much ether into igen layer to um Farm igen layer points which is kind of where this whole investment narrative starts is igen layer air drop the igen layer air drop starting with igen layer points uh and

If you deposit ether into igen layer you get igen layer points if you deposit liquid staking tokens into igen layer you also get Igan layer to uh points but you are probably also farming the liquid reaking token of the system that you are depositing into so for

Example if you are depositing into IG layer via swell or via stake wise or via um any any of these other like sta for example you are you can also Farm the liquid reaking token that comes as well and this is why one of the major themes

The last major theme that we’ll talk about Ryan is aird drops um but we’ll get to that one uh right now igen layer is the dual air Farm because everyone is very hyped on reaking but you are also able to farm two air drops at once the igen layer drop which everyone’s excited

About and also a specific liquid reaking token that is entering the competition to ultimately replace liquid staking tokens to replace rocket pool to replace Lio because this game board for liquid raking tokens is brand new it’s a brand new fight it’s a brand new fight for tvl

And attention and liquidity and all of the wars of LST that were that were so hot in 2021 and 2022 are about to restart over again with liquid reaking tokens okay okay so I think we need two points of clarification here is one could you just reset why are people

Putting tokens in igen layer to begin with like what’s the entire what like what’s the point so you you were kind of um talking a bit more and emphasizing maybe a bit more uh airdrop farming and and kind of um that sort of use case but

Of course that is kind of a speculative use case that is uh to bootstrap the network that sort of thing but what is the end reason for why people are actually depositing tokens into igen layer what does igen layer do right Ian layer reaking networks are an additional source of yield to

Deposited capital and technically that Capital can be anything but for right now it is just ether if you want to explore why just ether we recently did an episode with stream with Mike neuter uh a couple weeks ago that’s already out uh and and so that answers in that

Episode but really you have ether staking and the yields from eth staking and this is the world the arena of liquid staking tokens that we all know you know R eth st e from Lio Etc um we are now entering the world of liquid reaking tokens and for all of the

Reaking networks that igen layer enables which is the point of igen layer there is additional yield that comes from the fees or inflation from these networks that get imbued into the liquid reaking token so the first reaking Network that’s going to come online is igen Da a data availability Network and there is

Going to be fees from rollups or from really anyone who wants to use and consume Igan DA’s data availability those fees for that service will be paid into the liquid reaking token and so you have the stake the yield from E staking you also have the fees going to igen Da

And then you know for any other what is called an ABS actively validated service which is what Igan da is it’s what a reaking network for any other igen layer Network AVS that generates yield these liquid reaking tokens will secure those networks and cap capture those yields

And deposit them into the liquid reaking tokens so liquid reaking tokens are ether the yield from eth staking and the fees from all igen layer networks that that particular liquid reaking token uh provides security for so it’s simply just more yield and we all we all love yielding crypto it’s ether denominated

Yield it’s ether Capital as a deposit and also it’s combined with these double airdrop Farms of igen layer and the specific liquid reaking token project that is working in this Arena so I think it’s the um an aligning of a handful of stars uh that are allting layer and

Liquid reing tokens into the narrative in 2024 okay and I should mention of course uh with with any yield there is uh also risk associ app with a Nothing free right so um that’s a note that all Bank list listeners should always be aware of whenever you see yield it’s really about

Your uh risk adjusted return and you have to factor smart contract risk the risk being slashed by all these various protocols but let me let me try to make sense of that so what igen layer essentially does is it takes a monetary unit like ether and um it uses in in in

The same way the ethereum network uses eth stake eth as a bond to secure the entire ethereum network igen layer is basically saying now you can use ether and kind of the validator set of ethereum to uh secure other applications and igen layer da is a data availability application that igen layer

Has kind of developed in house and that’s one of the first applications on top of the igen layer network but there will be more in the future you can imagine entire like chain link style Oracle networks launched on top of IG layer you can imagine entire kind of

Like I don’t know if uh we should call them rollups but sort of chains that are economically secured by eth in in in kind of a different way than than a rollup is so an entire rollup maybe secured by igen layer as an app all of

These various apps these are the avss uh that you mentioned um and so AVS stands for what active validator actively validated service which is kind of a complicated name it’s really just a reaking it’s an igen layer app we just call it an reaking app okay and so

That’s what’s happening and then just CL clarify this uh so what is the difference between a liquid staking token like stth and re e these are liquid staking tokens we’re all familiar with that and a liquid raking token is it just that you just take a liquid Stak token you

Take an re and you stake it again and then it becomes a liquid reaking token is that basically it yeah that’s basically it so think of it as a set of concentric circles where at the very center you have vanilla ether and one more concentric circle out you have

Staked ether either staked ether from Lido Stak either from rocket pool you could also solo stake and you get the yields baked into the liquid staking token baked into that and so now we two concentric circles out you know ether liquid staking tokens and now with igen

Layer you get one more concentric circle out which is liquid reaking tokens so inside of a liquid reaking token you also have the yield from staking also get the yields from actively validated services in enan layer now you can go to Igan layer.com and check out

All the avss that are either online or coming to be online there’s um I think about 15 that are on the website but there are many many more in stealth still working on their their systems the amount of yield coming out of these things we are unsure of it’s still kind

Of an unknown metric um it’ll be a combination of network inflation which we know is can be significant historically uh and then also fees from actually payments for these Services which I think is the largest unknown we don’t really know how large these fees can get I would guess it’s going to be

Uh a much less uh amount of yield in in comparison to network inflation um so there’s still some numbers um that are still be uh to be determined here Ryan you talked about the risks of slashing and the risks of reaking and that is definitely a very important theme that I

Think is going to differentiate certain uh liquid reaking token team there are many different reasons as to why a liquid reaking token team will win or lose this game but really the game is ultimately defined as maximizing exposure while minimizing risk can you maximize your liquid reaking token to

Every single reaking Network and capture all of the inflation and all of the yield and bake that into your liquid reaking token and can you do that earlier than the other teams while also minimizing risk uh and so the the event of getting slashed if you are restak

Network because you are providing these actively validated Services is significant because a you’re losing Capital but you’re also losing trust so this is kind of how I think this game will will win there’s the classic like there needs to be BD efforts there needs to be Integrations there needs to be

Partnerships but really the liquid reaking game will be won by maximizing exposure to avss and then minimizing risk and the reason this is a big deal is from a supply demand perspective I guess from a supply perspective there’s a lot of eth out there there’s a lot of

Staked eth out there in search of yield so this is another use case for eth kind of as the internet bond to secure non- ethereum networks non- ethereum applications as well which is kind of Novel and that’s on the supply side I guess on the demand side it will really

Be a function of um you know how many networks how many applications uh require eth or or can benefit from the economic security of ether rather than I I suppose bootstrapping their own token you kind of use ethereum’s validator and and uh e ether as a monetary asset to bootstrap

Your network security I guess that’s on the uh the demand side of things how many of these applications will really um like really take off it seems like da I know that’s another point that we’ll get to you but da ion layer da in and of itself might be a huge Catalyst for

Demand here but um there could be others and I guess igen layer is waiting for its breakout app now igen layer is not the only reaking protocol it’s probably the most well-known and the biggest but are there others as well David not natively on ethereum and in my opinion

Not having access to the capital of ether makes other reaking networks not as interesting um but that’s always you know my perspective that would probably come as no surprise to to listeners there is Babylon on bitcoin so Bitcoin reaking is a thing there’s another one I’m forgetting the name but it’s more in

Like the multi-chain multi-layer one ecosystem um and really like there’s actually no reason why ether needs to be the enshrined asset of choice um inside of igen layer except for just the monetary network of eth of eth is money as money like properties has a high market cap again we talked about this

Point specifically in the episode I did with Mike neuter and uh and S Ron from igen layer so go listen to that most more recent episode uh that we put out on the bankless podcast feed um there’s also just one of the reasons why I know

This is a big theme going into 2024 is the sheer number of teams that are going after this I’ve heard reports of up to 15 liquid reaking teams I haven’t been able to categorize them all but just like puffer Finance Rio reaking ether swell Network Ender protocol kelp Dow

Renzo protocol restake Finance the number of teams is like large because everyone is kind of seeing like oh this is another shot at winning what was the liquid staking token game but that game has kind of been won by Lio it’s hard to Dethrone Lio at this point but Li’s not

In their liquid reaking game uh and so it’s an open playing field and everyone’s very very hungry and so this is why I think it’s a theme for for why isn’t Li in the liquid reaking game they kind of are but they’re not doing the avss they’re not doing the IG layer

Applications directly I mean but um you can put uh steth inside of I layer correct correct yeah you can put eth inside a number of these applications uh so kelp Dow for example uh you can put Lio stake eth into kelp Dow along with Stater eth X eth into kelp uh and you

Can use both because they are token it’s one of the 15 liquid token projects uh that exist out there uh and so yeah so the some of these things have their own liquid staking token so like swell Network for example disclosure Ry and I are Angel Investors they are more

Vertically integrated because they have eth but they are also one of the earliest teams to Pivot into liquid reaking and so they’re more vertically integrated whereas kelp out isn’t doing their own LST but they are aggregating other lsts into their LRT so there’s a number of ways per different

Permutations to build these systems but the end product is a liquid reaking token which will have more yield than liquid staking tokens and it’s going to be a fight for Integrations into defi and just more liquidity and market makers and you know eventually there’s only so much Capital to go around so

That’s where all these teams are going to be competing on and it’s going to be hot I really like it because it’s just like a dual yield farming opportunity and so like I’m farming one of these air drops and uh it’s it’s nice because you

Get IG layer points and you get the LRT points and it’s just extra dopamine you know yeah no this has all of the I guess the setup to be a investment theme uh for next year I I can understand why you picked it we’ve got teams developing in

The space we’ve got got kind of a new based protocol that is sort of net new hasn’t been tried before right it’s kind of like uh you know using the economic security of a in the validator set of a network like ethereum and applying that to other networks and other applications

That’s novel that’s new also has the yield side of things also has the airdrop hunting side of things so I can see why this makes your list uh so reaking okay and liquid reaking tokens that’s number one David let’s go to number two this is uh salana tell me a

Bit about salana why did it make your list of uh investment themes uh well it kind of had to my hand was forced here uh the big question is is the meta now Bitcoin ethereum and salana is that the new question is that is salana now a blue chip is now number

Six or number five in total crypto market caps or it’s pretty far out out there uh and salana has absolutely won Q2 or Q3 Q4 of 2023 I think now kind of the question now that that salana has been like repriced significantly doing like a 9x when ether did a 2X in 2023

And Bitcoin did a 3X now salana you know it’s come back from the grave it’s come back from the the beating of of FTX now that’s in its re-review mirror the Lio airdrop has awoken Solana’s version of a defi summer uh and so now the question

Is is like can salana follow through on this you know top five Market cap valuation that it’s that it’s got itself um people are speculating that it can um in my opinion if salana wants to achieve its dreams it needs to enable unique and novel applications that would be

Impossible to build anywhere else right so like right now we have like a very popular application on salana is Jupiter and it’s aex and there’s another po popular application on salana called margin F and it’s like a margin uh collateralized um lending and margin position goo is you know flash Bots plus

Lio these are all things that we have on ethereum and so they’re important defi Financial Primitives and salana needs them and now they they do have them but in my opinion salana in order to follow through on its newly discovered valuation it needs to enable new categories of apps that cannot be built

Anywhere else it can’t just be a microcosm of ethereum people are calling what’s going on in salana right now Solana’s version of defi summer which you know is necessary but it’s not novel it’s not new um deepin decentralized physical infrastructure uh is a contender here for types of applications that can be

Built on salana in my opinion TBD if this is a real category um but this is kind of where I think people are focusing their attention and their um energy and their capital in 2024 is like what new novel use cases can be built on salana what new novel users can salana

Attract and you know can can it follow through on its Promises of being a top five Blue Chip asset do you think that salana the salana community will get serious about um economic protocol upgrades as well I mean certainly it’s fee Market needs uh an overhaul from a

Variety of of perspectives um there’s no 1559 type of uh mechanism yet although I think there are murmurings and and talk of that um I’ve seen over the last couple of weeks and and certainly bankless has has said this in the past too but uh some emphasis and some surfacing

Of the idea that Salon is actually creating a lot of inflation uh with with respect to um the amount that it issues on a daily basis versus the the fees that it that it kind of takes in do you think that these get resolved during the

Cycle or do these more get uh resolved during the next bare Market yeah that’s a good question I do think the from what I’ve been watching my conversation with recently with Anatoli and other people that I talked to in the salon space who are more informed than than me are they’re all

Starting to see a elevating of priority of the economics of salana not just because you have like the ethereum bullies who are like your guys’s economics are broken but also just for Network congestion and just fee market pricing and resource pricing in salana is under optimized kind of blunt and

Needs to be perfected you know salana has been focusing on other things now it’s time to focus on uh is salon’s fee Market structure which is also the same opportunity similar opportunity for salana to focus on its economics so I’m starting to see a like increased priority of this conversation inside of

The salana community we will see what they come up with because the other thing that salana is entering Ryan is the arena of governance because there is now multi client salana coming into the fold with fire dancer and a few other clients that are being built and so now

In order for salana as a system to upgrade it can’t just be uh the MB validators Channel and the salon tech Discord who are all pushing updates telling all their validators to update their software now there needs to be consensus among these different clients to upgrade in the same way according to

The same spec and this is a new arena for salana to to enter like protocol governance and so they are doing focusing on economics while also learning how to govern themselves which is new for Solana so this is a topic of interest for me and definitely an area

Of focus in 2024 I’d say it seems to be now consensus at least among kind of VCS and uh you’re like other other investors that salana is kind of the the ethereum of this cycle you know uh La last cycle famously ethereum did like I don’t know

How many uh did like a 10x like that uh you know 20x something like that um and the the idea is that salana may may repeat that uh basically and and be kind of the ethereum this cycle part part of me wonders about that and I I’m not sure

That we’ve seen tw’s really take off and have their moment I mean they’ve had glimmers in the sun you know arbitrum optimism in fact if you look at like the you know op price and ARB price a mutable X price it’s all kind kind of coming closer well uh op is at alltime

Highs right now right arbitrum is alltime high so maybe we’re moving into a bit of kind of a another lay Layer Two Season I’m not sure but what’s your take on that as a as a premise that salana is the ethereum of this cycle in terms of its price

Appreciation and maybe the the bare case for salana is that we haven’t actually seen the LT kind of bite back and really you know and they are crushing it on a lot of metrics uh if you kind of look at total locked value if you look at what

Base is doing all the development there what’s your take on this yeah the bare case for salana is that the price movement already happened it was 2023 like going from $100 soul to back to $250 soul is not like it’s not a clear path to that happening and so that’s the

Bare case is like the bullishness has already happened um the more bare case is that like it’s not just ethereum layer 2’s biting back but it’s also other highly optimized virtual machine layer ones that are coming online which we will also talk about in a second that’s another theme that’s coming um SE

And monad and suie and like other you know ver like parallelized VMS as layer ones are coming onto the scene uh and if you are an evm compatible optimized virtual machine like like Mo and add or say then you get the network effects of ethereum but the scale of salana and so

Like the kind of the the meme around ethereum lately in the narrative is like ethereum is squeezed between Bitcoin and salana and you know Bitcoin the money salana the execution Network well you I think you could present a similar scenario that salana squeeze between ethereum and other evm optimized layer

Ones that are evm compatible of which there are a couple uh and so it’s really I think about how far can the network effects around the Solon virtual machine take it uh and can they attract a decent amount of network effects that um adding the evm compatibility of monad uh plus

The virtual machine parallelization of monad you know how much does that squeeze salana and is is monad too late I think that’s a big question to ask all right so since we’ve been talking about it why why don’t we flip to number five David on the list we we’ll cover three

And four in a second but you’ve been talking about sui and monad and all of these things and I I think this fits with your number five investment theme which is parallelized EVMS so uh tell me about this why is this investment theme that that makes your list what is a

Parallelized evm I recently did a podcast Ryan with Anatoli uh I don’t know if you listened to it but I asked him the question that I also like to ask bitcoiners which is what is the most important component about Bitcoin there’s a number of different components

About Bitcoin the 21 million hard cap uh proof of work uh the ability to run your own node um what’s the most important important component about Bitcoin do you know what they all say they all have consensus on I I know that from our episode with Bitcoin bull Robert

Breedlove which which comes out uh pretty soon actually a canonical Bitcoin episode uh he said difficulty adjustment which actually surprised me but maybe you already knew that this was kind of the consensus view they all love the difficulty adjustment they kind they kind of call it the Capstone Keystone

Thing that really puts the Bitcoin system into alignment um so I asked that same question about um to Anatolia and he said parallelization the parallelization of this salana virtual machine that’s really the thing that salana is unique and differentiated about uh that that is its moat well the

Thing is uh there are a number of uh efforts to parallelize the evm that have come online or are coming online I started writing this uh six investment themes for 2024 Ryan um in couple weeks in December when SE announced their pivot from being a move based virtual

Machine chain I think if I recall correctly the move language from Facebook um and they pivoted into being a parallelized evm which was a surprise um a welcome surprise because you know the benefits are clear you get all of the network effects of ethereum if you are bite code compatible with the evm

Your unisab app your a app your synthetics app can just copy and paste now onto say with the low fees of a parallelized uh virtual machine the the low fees of salana and so SE has attracted people’s attention because its price went from 40 cents in mid December

To 80 cents now so like a 2X in two weeks um monad was the first team to really develop this parallelized evm uh narrative I met keone the um founder of monad because he wanted to parallelize the ethereum virtual machine so uh here here’s a a Keon tweet where he’s just

Posturing he goes list of evm chains parallel EV evm chains as as as of two months ago and it goes a list of one monat his project and then he goes list of parallel evm chains as of today monad Avalanche polygon say scroll neon uh

Which is a little bit of a you know we were here first kind of thing um uh there there have been a number of different parallel evm projects to all come online as of recently I don’t think this list is exhaustive um the one of the reasons why I’m calling this an

Investment theme of 2021 is a the layer one trade is always on it has always been a thing in crypto VCS love it uh retail loves it for some reason uh and say and monad we should say are layer ones right yes exactly yeah uh and and

Then also like the price performance of salana and has you know defined The Meta of parallelized EVMS or excuse me parallelized virtual machines with the svm but then the network effects of ethereum are have always been trying to be like bitten at by other layer ones uh

And so this is why I put uh parallelized EVMS as an investment theme for 2024 yeah uh that makes sense and and parallelized EVMS can also happen in rollups right on on Layer Two so they they don’t have to be layer ones in the way that that sui and monad are but you

Know some on this list like uh poly polygon and uh scroll certainly those are layer twos it it seems to me when we talk about parallelizing the evm what we’re trying to do is we’re actually trying to squeeze as much throughput and transactions per second out of the

Execution layer aren’t we so it’s Innovation that ethereum has actually um not undertaken in its seven years of existence which is like actually re-engineering its execution layer to support like massive throughput massive transactions per second that’s what salana and svm were built with from from the ground up and ethereum has just

Never innovated on that and now it seems like it is uh which is which is kind of good when I say ethereum by the way I mean the entire crypto ecosystem the evm counts as ethereum yeah exactly and so MO monad is not right now building on

Top of ethereum at all but they are uh creating a new parallelized evm that’s that’s going to be pretty Innovative um so so what do you think here David do you think some of this will start to nip at Sal’s uh narrative a bit more and do you think some of the narrative

Investors might switch from like salana to the newest low market cap parallelized EV layer one like jump on sui jump on monad uh and that could take some of the attention away from from salana what’s your take here I think the answer is yes and and and can also take

It away from ethereum like it it’s parallelized EVMS are trying to nip at both um the difference I would say with the parallelized evm is that um it’s I don’t think really the ethereum layer one is ever going to upgrade its implementation of the evm them but layer

Twos I think are much more free to experiment and explore with different virtual machine specs and I would be actually a huge fan I I don’t I know I’ve asked Keon hey like will you ever like open source the monad evm he goes yeah yeah we will and that gives layer

Twos the option to bump out the single-threaded ethereum virtual machine that powers um optimism and arbitrum arbitrum with the asteris because they have Stylus um and pop in their their parallelized virtual machine I wouldn’t it’s not really even appropriate to put a parallelized evm on the ethereum layer

One because there’s a trade-off there between execution and security that I don’t think we should make on the ethereum layer one we want the most secure single-threaded basic non-complicated machine settlement layer for the ethereum layer one but let’s let’s take the let’s take the monad VM

And put it on all the layer twos let’s really juice those things up it does seem like The Best of Both Worlds you get kind of like highly secure single threaded settlement and then you get in the execution layer parallelized like infin Infinity TPS um like execution so uh it it’s I I

Understand why that’s a theme then David So before we get to number three four and then eventually six we want to tell you about the sponsors that made this episode possible are you launching a token is it already live how are you managing the legal and tax for providing

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And uh Michael from framework did they make you bullish on games that episode that we did was that back in November yeah yeah they definitely did uh definitely if you look around at all the gaming experts the crypto gaming experts it’s just an unequivocal fact that a

Strong number of games crypto games will launch in 2024 and then even more will launch in 2025 it’s like a likely outcome that most of these will flop but that’s just the that’s just a normal thing to happen in the gaming industry sometimes most most of the times games

Just flop you know they get some initial experimenters who like to play new games and then hopefully with like marketing on Twitch and you know influencer marketing with game streamers they can capture some traction uh we only need Ryan one game to work to actually make a breakthrough in the world of crypto

Gaming well this because this is the stat that blew my mind David is I think uh Vance gave it on our podcast there are 3.2 billion Gamers globally that’s a lot of freaking people that’s like half the world is a gamer of some sort or

Another like I think I’m sure a lot of you know Candy Crush casual gamers are included in the stat but who knows expansive definition of Gamers possible for sure but that’s a lot of people and so do you think that this could be an on-ramp for all of those like I I guess

Maybe the vision for crypto gaming is people don’t even know they’re on crypto rails and they’re playing a game they’re just having fun and Underneath It All there’s like you know gas block space being consumed right at the kind of the the very basement level and it’s fun and

There’s some economic component and uh you like the wallet experience is seamless it feels very much like a you know a typical web2 gaming type of wallet is is that where you’re think how you’re thinking this plays out I think that’s exactly right I think when we say

The words crypto Gamers or gamers in general people kind of assume uh people with like an ultra widescreen monitor they have the most expensive graphics card they’re playing very intense AAA beautiful games that took hundreds of millions of dollars to develop we’re not there yet that won’t be 2024 uh it’ll

It’ll be Candy Crush probably um maybe it’ll be some there was a a pretty Beautiful Dark Souls like game that I played at eth Denver that you items were assets so there are like in these kind of these beautiful arena games it’s going to be cheaper and easier to

Develop the Candy Crush like games uh also like the slot machine type games like these are kind of a little bit easier to develop and more closer to crypto because you know we’re already gambling um but putting assets into these things not that hard uh and it’s

Easier to test and and iterate one of the reasons why I think this is um so bullish Ryan is because like like I said if we just have one game that’s has crypto features get adopted by non- crypto people it will be the first time that crypto gets adopted by non-crypto

People we had a taste of that with friendtech when we saw um an NBA player like an influencer and like only fans artist briefly adopt friend tech for a couple weeks so we got a taste of that um but I think this is like kind of our best shot at getting crypto agnostic

People to be touching crypto stuff uh and you know now’s kind of the time and there’s a clip from the van Spencer episode that we did that I think explains why gamers are like the most likely candidate so let’s go ahead and play that go into that a little bit more

Advanced why are why are Gamers like crypto people or how Cut From the Same Cloth are we I mean if you ever hung out in a like a gaming Discord and they’re all screeching at each other for you know you really can’t even interpret and they’re they’re on their computer you

Know they’re internet people um they’re obsessive they own digital items they participate in digital economies like a lot of nerds davidd they are literally like you know somewhere in the genealogical tree like there are cousins and so it just doesn’t feel like a large lift um to get them in

Here it’s a lot different than like I don’t know say like music people like music people are cool they go out you know they do different things they’re not they don’t own digital assets other than something on like iTunes it’s just different okay so V that was Vance

Making the point that that Gamers and crypto people are are very similar have like a lot of shared culture very online native types of communities the question in my mind though is how do you get exposure to crypto gaming right because the big winner from the last cycle in

Crypto gaming was probably axi and that was an individual game title to me it feels risky to bet on an individual game title unless you feel incredibly strongly convicted about that particular game and the way you probably do that is you have to play the game really love it

Really understand it and there’s a path there for investment Returns the other um path is picks and shovels right so you invest in platforms or you invest in tools uh certainly immutable is one of those uh and like the price point from the time even we did that conversation

With fance and Michael to to now this is the uh the IMX charts David what are we looking it’s rock yeah and and so IMX is is maybe a platform I think they have over 200 games that um you could invest in if you’re bullish on on crypto gaming

In particular what the you know like what teams are building on uh immutable X another is maybe the Ronin chain that was the origination of of axi actually kind of a a side chain and there’s the possibility that that comes back and has a form of a salana style uh Renaissance

If you will so those are two possible bets um what else is in your mind with how you get exposed exposure to crypto gaming I think Avalanche has a gaming division um and so that’s definitely a contender uh if you’re into that ecosystem um beam is something to look

At as well I recently did an episode with Robbie from immutable and beam because they are teaming up with immutable how those tokens are split I’m not too sure what but really like beam it’s like a gaming text deack for example uh and So like um there’s like

It’s beam built on immutable which is built on polygon which is built on ethereum so there’s like this emerging Tech stack of gaming there’s also the the immutable passport for like gamer IDs um and let’s see off the top of my head I’m not super deep in this

Ecosystem but I think those are kind of like the big ones there you go uh David let’s go to number four which is Da data availability so do you think that we are going to see the data availability Wars in 20124 and what could that mean lay

Out the landscape for us who who are kind of the the big da players uh coming into this year I think the da Wars starting pistol really got fired when Celestia air dropped its Network token to a lot of people uh at A2 billion doll valuation and then the token went from

$2 to $14 without ever going down and so big wealth effect is it is it still doing that those kind of moves uh it has it has topped out briefly between 12 and $14 it has not gone down uh why did the price just go up up up up up well

Because ts stakers are earning 16% and so there’s a very strong demand to buy up tokens and to stake it to get that yield uh in early bull markets uh yield we like the yield um when people are buying tokens to stake for yield it starts to become dubious I think we’re

Starting we’re in the relatively early phases of the bull market so there’s still plenty of time left before the musical chairs really gets intense here uh but that’s kind of my model we saw that with yield farming of of last cycle right I mean we’re talking about David

Celestia 12 billion market cap 12 billion market cap at least I think there is a lot left to explore as to the margins of um data availability as a product that is an episode that I’ve scheduled um with John uh charbono and Neil somani from Eclipse to ask the

Question is data availability a good business model um but right now people are earning 14% 16% yield on staking Celestia and you know what else Ryan they’re also getting a drops uh and so staking Tia staking Celestia has turned into an airdrop Target there was an air drop that went out yesterday called

Dimension that went out to uh Celestia stakers as well as like um ethereum layer 2 users pudgy penguin holders madlad holders Toran holders uh osmosis on Cosmos users so it was like a four or five Network platypus of airdrop targets uh across many different networks uh and

So people have also started to speculate that staking Celestia is also an airdrop Target which makes much more sense as a margins business than data availability but that’s of course a short-term fleeting narrative that only lasts in Bull markets um so that that was the

Reason why um I think the da Wars have started to kick off and that’s just about Celestia uh igen da we’ve talked about this with the reaking um meta igen da is set to launch pretty damn soon here uh and that will be a different kind of data availability Network than

Cel with different properties more scalable less secure I’m not actually totally sure um I’m not totally well versed on the different properties here this is something I’m researching in the moment um and but I think Celestia and Igan da are the two big data availability contenders there’s so many

Uh ethereum layer 2s and other types of services that have integrated with Igan da and then people have also started to Pivot into Data availability uh near tezos has a data availability remember tezos ran has a data availability service near recently pivoted there’s a veil which is a former polygon project

Uh I bet you there’s probably more in stealth there’s probably more coming uh and so I think the da Wars are going to be a very big investment theme in 2024 it’s also interesting uh ethereum is is throwing a hat in the ring oh yeah ethereum ethereum is a DA layer well

Bitcoin Bitcoin is also being a DA layer for all the goddamn ordinals that people are buying right I with ethereum in particular of course it it um is a da layer now for um layer twos it’s a shitty da layer but it’s a secure it’s a very expensive uh da layer it’s highly

Secure very expensive not scalable and 4844 um should come out probably in q1 seems like we’re getting really close to testet early Q2 early Q2 you think you think early Q2 so maybe late q1 early Q2 and uh that will I actually I can’t recall off the top of my head how much

Of an amplification that will be for um you know but we did that entire episode on ethereum blob space uh to to give you a clue there anyway lots of data availability I think the big question in investors mind is is Da more of a commodity like will it retain and a True

Value over time it seems like everybody can provide some sort of Da with with different security assurances or is this um an investable thesis are you kind of investing in the the modular blockchain by purchasing uh Tia at 12 billion market cap or igen layer right um that’s

A big TBD and I think it’s going to be a topic of research for us in the months to come I think the answer about data availability is yes it will become commoditized but in the same way that like internet bandwidth became commoditized people just used more so

Our capacity to consume da is going to be matched by Project’s ability to commoditize Da so it’ll be kind of an arms race of like people always buy more space more data availability uh and so it’s a little bit of a yes and so I think the the final fully evolved

Economics of these layers is undetermined but I don’t think anyone’s in doubt about the need for like Mass consumption of data availability it’s a big question though in general in these three layers in the modular stack which will ACR the most value you have the kind of the settlement layer you have

The da layer and then you have the execution layer right and um I I mean the big contenders right now are obviously settlement with ethereum being worth you know 250 billion and then execution layers which is where we get kind of all of the l2s um but how about

Data availability will it will it take an equal share of the piie will it be less will it be more that’s the big question all right so that brings us to number six this feels like a bonus to me investment theme if you will but it’s

More like a uh free gifts we’re all getting free stuff this year uh David you’re call 2024 kind of the year of the airdrop um you’ve got this tweet here the biggest aird drops of all time explain this one to us and why did uh airdrops make your

List here yeah I think well it’s already an investment theme discords are a flurry with airdrop hunting strategies Bank list Discord is buzzing with like Manta as of recently uh there’s a lot of airdrop farmers in the bank list Discord of course because of you have the the

Airdrop Hunter product um but like a few of the other discords I’m in are also all playing these same games just like aird Drop farming air drop farming aird drop farming uh this is an older tweet um that I put out where biggest aird drops of all time arbitrum coming in at

Number one who put $ 1.5 billion dollars into the hands of its users when it dropped it at a 15 billion dollar valuation ens dropped $1 billion dollar at a four uh billion dollar fully diluted valuation and then dydx dropped $900 million at an 11 billion fully DED

Valuation and I think igen layers is coming for the number one spot and it’s going to be easy uh and that’s just because there’s so much hype and demand for for um for Igan layer but it’s really it’s I think it’s going to be a theme that dominates in 2024 uh we

Already saw the dimension airdrop I mentioned that earlier go live yesterday or the day before and uh that’s a pretty hyped chain um and it it really the strategies for how to get these air drops I think will always be kind of a hot potato because all of the easy

Things are going to be you know crowded uh and so like the dimension strategy of like madlad holders pgy penguin holders tensor and nft holders TS dakers ethereum layer 2 users but not the layer one um and Cosmo Cosmos osmosis train users like really getting precise and specific about airdrop criteria has got

To be a strategy for all these aird drops because otherwise like the farmers the farmers are taking all the low hanging fruit and so in order to have a good airdrop you need to become more precise uh and and like Celestia for example there’s a bunch of layer twos

And other applications that are using Celestia for data availability so that’s a pretty hot uh Target but I bet you people are need to going to need to become more sophisticated than that to really get these things um earlier or later last year in uh 2023 Ryan I made

The claim that2 billion dollars will be aird dropped to users in 2024 I’m going to go and update that um prediction and I say $2 billion will be dropped to users in 2024 not counting Ian layer separately from Igan lay because I think Igan lay can drop two billion dollars by

Itself to users uh that is my prediction for 2024 there you go uh that’s it th those were uh five and then plus this bonus one so we talked to reaking we talked salana we talked about games we talked about data availability parallelized EVMS and lastly airdrops

It’s going to be an exciting year David for sure uh anything else before we close uh I think that’s it my man uh are you ready for 2024 yeah dude 2023 was uh tiring in a lot of ways but you know we we’ll see

What we have in store for us in 2024 I you know I think I’m excited I think I’m excited I’m excited I remember uh going through the bare Market of 2018 to 2020 and then like when defi Summer started and then ether broke from 400 to 7 $0000

Like everyone was like oh it’s on like it’s a poll market and I was like euphoric I was like yes like this is the poll Market I was promised and then six months left like later like my eyes are bloodshot my hair’s frazzle I don’t have

Any sleep like uh like Tera Luna frogs are attacking me uh rug PES are happening it’s just like mortar shells and dead friends and I did not realize the insanity that was coming our way but right now we’re in that like quiet limbo period where we haven’t attracted the

Grifts and the scammers and the retail so it’s actually kind of nice they’re coming though David they’re coming some of them are already in our midst we just don’t really know who they are yet already walk amongst us oh god well hold on everyone this is uh 2024 you’re

Definitely in crypto I got to end with this risten disclaimers David and I are Angel Investors in swell I think we mentioned them in this episode we certainly mentioned igen layer we’re advisers in igen layer I’m an angel investor in monad there’s always a link to all disclosures at bank list.com

Disclosures I’ll end with this crypto is risky you could lose what you put in but we are headed west this is the frontier it’s not for everyone but we’re glad you’re with us on the bankless journey thanks a Lot