Forecast review one year later: What is the main trend of this round of market?

Author: Lao Bai Source: X, @Wuhuoqiu

Looking back at the predictions for this round of main line one year ago, I think it was half right. The current main and secondary lines currently have the following feel

1. Payfi - This cannot be counted wrong, but it should be more accurately called "stablecoin". Now RWA can actually be thrown into this line

The most noteworthy targets on this line are -

$CRCL - In essence, it is betting on Circle's position in the top two stablecoins. The current price of $135 is still not cheap based on market value and profit, but considering the 5-8 times expansion of stablecoins in the next five years and the big pullback from $300 to $108 in the past few months, it may be a ok opportunity to get on board. I personally jumped in at $115

$PlasmaFDN - Since you don't have Tether shares, Plasma is the only target you can buy at the moment. Of course, I will wait for spot and mainnet instead of betting on contracts. Plasma currently far surpasses Stable and similar competitors in terms of funding, ecosystem development, and social media presence. The TVL of its mainnet launch is roughly $3-4B. The current pre-market/contract price of $6B is also very expensive, so wait for spot trading to launch to find opportunities. Similarly, the trillion-dollar stablecoin market in the coming years will create enormous potential for stablecoin public chains, and it will be interesting to see which stablecoin will emerge as the leader. Currently, Tron, the established leader, has seen its USDT TVL fall from a high of $83B to $77B in the past month. Among the newer players (Plasma, Stable, Arc, Tempo, Codex, etc.), Plasma currently holds a significant lead. $ENA - This is a hedge against the first two. Stablecoins are the most visible and compelling narrative, so bet on both centralized and decentralized options. The only decentralized asset worth buying is probably Ethena. USDE has already surpassed 13.5 billion, and the DAT and fee switch are ready. Its fundamentals are incredibly solid. Oh, and they also have the centralized USDTB, which is about to break 2 billion, and then there's Converge, their own RWA public chain... There are a lot of positives, but the price has been quite weak recently. Is it the market swindlers selling?! $Ondo - I mentioned this in the previous post on Twi. I bought my Crcl from Ondo. It's currently the only platform offering 24/7 US stock trading, with no KYC requirements (through 1inch) and backed by a major institution, making it relatively safe and reliable. If you're bullish on the borderless US stock blockchain trend, Ondo is one of the few worthwhile investments. Of course, the market cap is a bit hesitant, with its obvious high control and high FDV. Good stuff doesn't come cheap... 2. AI Agent - This isn't quite right. Last year's AI agents were Goat, ai16Z, and the like. They were popular for a while, but then everyone realized they were just meme reskins, and the hype died down. This year, quite a few truly usable AI agents with potential for product/market fit have emerged. For example, Skywork in Web2, and @HeyAnonai, @gizatechxyz, @Almanak__, and @ReiNetwork0x in Web3 are all good. I'm personally most interested in the Bittensor halving early next year. If a potential gold mine can be found around that time, I'd consider investing. The leaders are still the leaders, and three or four subnetworks are starting to see revenue growth. Overall, they're still the Web3 AI projects with the most potential for success. 3. Meme - This is absolutely true. Meme has been popular since last year, and this year, there's even been a fierce battle among major launchpads to grab market share from Pump. However, your uncle is always your uncle. Pump remains far ahead and has already begun entering the live streaming market, taking the Web3 TikTok path. The Alpha of the meme track is changing daily, while there is only one Beta, Pump.

4. In addition to the three main themes mentioned above, a potential new theme in this round is prediction markets. Polymarket's data has been steadily growing, and Kalshi's has been even more explosive. Its data performance in the past month has caught up and has surpassed Polymarket by a wide margin. The primary market has been flooded with dozens of new prediction market projects this year, and Hyperliquid has also launched the HIP-4 proposal specifically for event prediction markets (HIP-3 is not suitable for many event-based prediction markets). Today, I also saw an article by an insurance industry expert saying that prediction markets have the potential to disrupt the current insurance industry in the future. After all, insurance is based on probability and mathematics, with some financial packaging. What if users could access and hedge these transparent probabilities and risk exposures themselves, rather than accepting the black box odds of insurance companies? However, there aren't many secondary assets worth buying in this sector, so we can only wait for Polymarket to issue its token. It's said to be valued at 3 billion, which is still expensive... Finally, there's another angle to look at the main theme of this round, or perhaps the only main theme, which is projects with "real revenue, profits, and token buybacks."