Top 4 Cryptos to Buy for 2023

Bitcoin (BTC-USD) has consistently trended in the cryptocurrency world, but it’s no longer the only coin in town.

The digital currency advanced 40% in just the first week of trading in 2021…

And that’s after climbing more than 300% in 2020.

But in May of ‘21, the red-hot cryptocurrency cooled off after one of the industry’s biggest and most well-known supporters – Tesla CEO Elon Musk – terminated Bitcoin as a form of payment for Tesla’s vehicles.

Musk cited the crypto’s environmental impact as the cause, prompting heavily traded cryptos to plummet.

Then announcements from China widening its crypto crackdown sent the entire crypto market into a tailspin.

And 2022 has been defined by Fed rate hikes and hot inflation, which has had a strong adverse impact on the equity markets – crypto included.

Even before this decline, my team and I had anticipated the drop.

I believe Bitcoin, cryptos, and the blockchain represent some of the most promising innovations of our times. But just like the internet before it, this shift won’t happen overnight.

Long-term, I am extremely bullish on cryptocurrencies, but that unsubstantiated cryptocurrency bubble had to reach its natural conclusion the same way the dot-com bubble of 2000 ended… with an enormous cryptocurrency crash.

Now, this crash isn’t the end. Far from it.

This is the beginning of the Cryptocurrency Revolution. It’s just the end of bad cryptos built on nothing but hype, and the emergence of strong cryptos built on world-changing technologies.

We have strong cause to believe this, including using Gartner’s “Hype Cycle,” which teaches us that new technologies go through five phases:

1. Technology Trigger: A new breakthrough technology emerges, new companies are born, early VC investors pour money into those new companies, and a small wave of early adopters use these new technologies.
2. Peak of Inflated Expectations: Mass media coverage begins, tons of new companies emerge hoping to capitalize on the trend, everyone starts hyping up the tech as the “next big thing,” and more and more mainstream folks start using the tech.
3. Trough of Disillusionment: First-generation products based on the tech disappoint, new companies start to fail, the media talks about those failures, the hype train fades, and new VC money comes into the space as sky high expectations come down.
4. Slope of Enlightenment: The mainstream media forgets about the new tech, but the companies that remain work to finetune the technology and develop second- and third-generation products that have much clearer value-props and use-cases.
5. Plateau of Productivity: The technology starts to be used by the masses, and the companies in the space enter a prolonged period of durable growth.

 These stages are graphically represented in the following chart:

We believe cryptos have entered the “Trough of Disillusionment.” This is where thousands of cryptos will fail and several hundred billion dollars of value will be wiped out.

Investors need to be smart here. Those who are smart will make millions.

After the Trough of Disillusionment comes the Slope of Entitlement, followed swiftly by the Plateau of Productivity. The big money is made in these phases.

It is during these phases that the wheat is separated from the chaff, and true visionaries and innovators in a new technology emerge.

During the internet era, this durable growth phase started in 2003, and in this phase, companies like Amazon (AMZN), Netflix (NFLX), Meta (META), and Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL) started to use the internet to create second- and third-generation products and services that would go on to change the world.

Cryptos will follow the same path.

You could do a lot worse than buying Bitcoin at this price, but there’s a much bigger opportunity at hand…

Because while you could do well with BTC, you could do much better in several of its much smaller “cousins” in the cryptocurrency sector.

You see, there are a handful of very small “Bitcoin cousins” that could soar more than 31 times the rise of BTC.

That’s right.

If you’re poised to make $10,000 in bBitcoin, you could make 31 times that – $310,000 – in its tiny cousins.

If you’re poised to make $100,000 in Bitcoin, you could make 31 times that – $3.1 million – in its tiny cousins.

But at the risk of sounding repetitive, you must be smart about how you invest in the crypto market.

This is the 1990s all over again. Make sure you don’t buy Pets.com. Instead, buy Amazon.com.

The million-dollar question is: What are the best cryptocurrencies to buy today that have enormous long-term upside potential? These are the cryptos that could help you reach total financial freedom in a very short time.

If you’re at all interested in leveraging the twists and turns of the cryptocurrency hype cycle to make a lot of money, I urge you to learn about this huge story.

In this report, I’m going to teach you about the transformative technology of altcoins… plus how to leverage this undercurrent of cryptocurrency innovation to set yourself up for life-changing returns.

Thawing the Crypto Winter

It goes without saying, but yet, we have to say it: 2022 didn’t go as we expected for the crypto markets. And as we near 2023, the unexpected implosion of crypto exchange FTX has caused a crypto contagion amid an already frost “Crypto Winter.”

The bears are crawling out of the woodwork to call the event the “nail in the coffin” for the crypto markets, but ultimately, we still expect cryptos to soar in 2023.

There are four big things at play here.

1. Big bankruptcies are not uncommon to new tech industries or the financial sector. Cryptos exist in the overlap of those two spaces, and therefore, big bankruptcies like FTX and Luna are actually historically quite normal.
2. Big bankruptcies did not end the automobile revolution, the PC revolution, or the internet revolution – and in fact, big bankruptcies tended to mark the bottoms of short-term pullbacks in those revolutions.
3. Ultimately, macroeconomic factors such as the trajectory of inflation, the Fed, interest rates, yields, and the economy will overwhelm headline risks such as the FTX bankruptcy, and we still strongly believe those factors will shift significantly bullish in 2023.
4. If this really is the Dot Com Crash 2.0, history says now is the time to buy as we’ve reached “max pain” and are due for two decades of significant returns from current levels in cryptos.

What happened at FTX is obviously terrible for all involved and will likely weigh down the industry for a bit moving forward. FTX had its tentacles across the whole crypto space, after all, so the bankruptcy will be felt across the whole industry.

But here’s the thing: Big bankruptcies should be expected in cryptos at this stage of the game. Early stage technological megatrends always have high-profile bankruptcies, like Commodore in the computer revolution, nearly Nokia in the smartphone revolution, and WorldCom in the internet revolution. Even further, the financial sector is full of its own high-profile bankruptcies, most notably Lehman Brothers.

Cryptos exist in the overlap of finance and early-stage technological megatrends. They exist in the overlap of two industries known for high-profile bankruptcies. It should be expected, then, that the crypto space has its own share of high-profile bankruptcies – which it has, like Terra and FTX.

Importantly, these bankruptcies will not stop the crypto movement. Commodore’s bankruptcy didn’t stop the computer from becoming a consumer ubiquity. Nokia’s near-bankruptcy didn’t stop the smartphone from redefining communication globally. WorldCom’s bankruptcy didn’t stop the internet industry from eating the world. Nor did Lehman Brothers bankruptcy destroy the global financial system.

Technological megatrends tend to take bankruptcies on the chin, and keep moving forward. Cryptos will prove no different.

Ultimately, we believe the FTX story makes for a good headline today, but that the world will move on from this story rather quickly. Remember how the Terra fiasco felt like a world-ender at the time? All it did, though, was cause a brief crash in cryptos. The world proceeded to forget mostly about Terra within a few weeks, and after a brief crash, BTC and its fellow cryptos went flat for about five months.

The FTX fiasco should follow a similar timeline, and therefore, won’t be a significant driver of crypto prices in 2023.

Instead, we believe macroeconomic factors will drive cryptos prices next year, and we continue to believe those factors are significantly shifting bullish.

This week, we found that inflation is crashing – and that it is doing so without the help of unemployment spiking and the housing market rolling over. But we know that unemployment rates are gong to start spiking soon (look at all the layoff announcements, from Meta to Disney to Lyft) and that home prices are going to start dropping (list prices have been cut dramatically). Therefore, inflation – which is already crashing – will crash even harder over the next several months as the labor market weakens and home prices drop.

This rapid crash in inflation will force the Fed to pivot dovish in early 2023, which will lead to a drop in projected interest rates and a drop in bond market yields. That, in turn, will re-strengthen the economy, and drive a massive rally across risk assets.

By early 2023, this backdrop will matter significantly more to crypto prices than the FTX bankruptcy. Therefore, if the macroeconomic picture does develop as we expect, then cryptos still look due for a massive rally in 2023 behind falling inflation, falling rates, and falling yields.

This rally will not be a year-long affair. We suspect it’ll be the start of a multi-decade trend.

Lots of investors are comparing the current crash in cryptos to the dot-com bubble. We feel that’s an accurate comparison, and while many bring it up to paint a bearish picture for cryptos, we actually think the comparison is quite bullish.

There are two sides to the coin when it comes to the dot-com bubble. The first side is that tech stocks got butchered by 80% in the early 2000s. The second side is that after getting butchered, those same tech stocks soared by thousands of percent over the next 20 years.

Therefore, if this really is the dot-com crash all over again, then at some point, the crypto crash will create amazing investment opportunities.

We think that point is now.

In the dot-com bubble, tech stocks dropped about 80% over the course of 12 to 18 months, before falling flat in an “accumulation zone”. They then rallied thousands of percent from 2003 to 2022.

In the current crypto crash, Bitcoin has dropped about 80% over the course of 12 to 18 months (depends on if you take it from the April 2021 or November 2021 peak). History says, then, that we’ve reached “max pain” in the crypto crash. From here, cryptos should consolidate in an “accumulation zone” before they soar thousands of percent over the next 20 years!

Overall, we remain committed to the Boom Cycle 2023 thesis.

Ultimately, the market will move on from the FTX fiasco. The lasting impacts will be minor. Macroeconomic factors will overwhelm the news flow and price action by December, and if those factors do pan out as bullishly as we expect, then cryptos should be off to the races by early 2023.

Moreover, if history repeats and cryptos are truly working through their own Dot Com Crash right now, then now is a fantastic time to accumulate cryptos before they soar in the 2020s and 2030s like tech stocks soared in the 2000s and 2010s.

We remain bullish.

That doesn’t mean we are rushing to buy the dip. The FTX and Terra fiascos do warrant caution. We should wait for confirmation signals from the market before we do actually buy the dip.

However, it does mean we shouldn’t run for the hills, either, and instead, should wait on the sidelines, ready to pounce when the technicals start to improve.

We suspect that could happen quite soon.

Until then, stay patient, and stay bullish. (Check out our video essay on the FTX meltdown here.)

The Fastest Legal Way to Get Rich in America

Nothing about the bull case for crypto has changed — it remains one of the largest explosions of wealth in modern history. People who invest modest stakes in altcoins will make millions of dollars.

But to truly understand the magnitude of this opportunity, you must understand that altcoins aren’t really cryptocurrencies in the way most people think about them.

To know why many altcoins are about to skyrocket thousands of percent in value, you need to know that these assets aren’t “fantasy internet money.”

They are actually investments in one of the most valuable, most revolutionary technologies ever created…

…And they will create a MULTI-TRILLION-dollar tsunami of wealth for their owners.

Remember; the underlying technology behind Bitcoin and altcoins is blockchain.

You can think of blockchain and cryptocurrencies like a virtual ledger…

But to truly convey their stunning wealth-creation power, I prefer to say blockchain technologies are just really, really, really valuable software programs.

Now, if you’ve paid attention to what has happened in the world and the stock market over the past 30 years, you should be ready to jump out of your chair and buy altcoins with both hands right now.

That’s because software programs are the oil of the 21st century. They are one of the greatest forces for wealth creation on Earth.

The discovery of oil deposits around the world in the 20th century minted millionaires faster than anyone could count.

It was one of the fastest, biggest accumulations of wealth in human history. People went from being broke to having more money than their grandkids could spend… virtually overnight.

When I say software programs are one of the greatest forces for wealth creation on Earth, I’m not talking about conventional wealth creation… in which it takes you 30 years to save up $1 million.

I’m talking about wealth creation on steroids… in which investors can make $30 million in one year. I know that sounds outlandish, but let’s look at the amazing facts right in front of our eyes.

Bill Gates became one of the world’s richest men because software programs are the oil of the 21st century. Just think about the Microsoft (MSFT) spreadsheet program we call “Excel.”

How much time did Excel save the human race?

A billion years?

Ten billion years?

Excel is now the world’s most popular spreadsheet computer program. It has saved us stupendous amounts of time by allowing us to automate calculations and financial analysis… instead of doing single calculations by hand.

One person running Excel can do the work of a million accountants from days past.

That’s the power of software programs, and it’s occurred across all industries.

Over the past 30 years, software programs have created an explosion of efficiency and human productivity. A great software program can help you make smart business decisions, find travel deals, talk to loved ones, and get a cheap ride home.

Software has massively improved our ability to communicate, share information, transact, gather data, and analyze data.

Health care, education, transportation, manufacturing, energy production, food production, retail, banking, you name it… computer programs have allowed us to do it much more efficiently.

Given all the time, money, and frustration software programs have saved us, it’s no wonder they’ve kicked off one of the largest, fastest accumulations of wealth in human history:

*In 1986, computer program leader Microsoft went public. Shares are up more than 245,000% since then… turning every $10,000 invested into more than $36 million.

*In 1986, shares of computer program leader Oracle (ORCL) went public. Shares are up more than 122,000% since then. Oracle founder Larry Ellison is one of the world’s richest people, worth over $98 billion.

*In 1998, two young computer programmers Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google and created the world’s most valuable search engine program. Both men are now worth more than $70 billion each. Their early backers made billions, as well.

Software programs have become the world’s ultimate wealth creators… because we all place enormous value on their ability to save us time and headaches… and because they’ve made us massively more productive.

The fastest legal way to get rich in America is to own a piece of a valuable software program or algorithm.

Which brings me to my million-dollar point…

Blockchain technology is about to unleash an epic new wave of computer program wealth.

Real altcoins aren’t anything like “fantasy internet money,” as they are portrayed in the press. Investments in the best altcoins are investments in the next generation of revolutionary software programs.

Forget all the words you hear when people talk about cryptocurrencies and blockchain. They don’t matter much compared to these two key facts:

1. Valuable software programs are the oil of the 21st century. They’ve become the world’s ultimate wealth creators… because we all place enormous value on their ability to save us time and headaches… and because they’ve made us massively more productive. So, owning them is the fastest legal way to get rich in America.
2. Blockchains and the altcoins powered by them are just really, really valuable software programs… and they are about to unleash a multi-trillion-dollar tsunami of new wealth.

In fact, I love the beneficial disintermediation made possible across all industries by blockchain technology.

To understand just how powerful this transformational technology is, we need to truly understand the ways in which it will change the world…

Blockchain: A Transformational Technology Taking Shape

In the big picture, blockchain is arguably the most disruptive technology since the internet, with the core of this disruption being blockchain’s centralized and immutable ledger.

This thoughtfully constructed ledger enables innately untrustworthy individuals and entities to collectively create trustworthy systems, all without the need for any central authority – hence the term “disintermediation.”

Blockchain enables humans to remove the middleman from legacy systems and replace them with a collective ledger.

Now… why would we do that?

Because middlemen are often unnecessary profit-takers.

Further, they’re sometimes subject to corruption (see: the financial crisis of ‘08).

By removing and replacing them with an automated and incorruptible technology (which doesn’t need a paycheck), we can make today’s systems and processes more trustworthy, faster, and cheaper.

The applications here are theoretically infinite.

One application of blockchain technology that Wall Street is currently drooling over is the creation of blockchain-enabled currencies – or cryptocurrencies – to create a new era of decentralized finance (DeFi) that doesn’t involve big banks as profit-taking intermediaries.

And DeFi is the future.

That said, DeFi, is not where I see the most upside in the blockchain/cryptocurrency megatrend.

After all, DeFi is intended to disintermediate banks, like Goldman Sachs (GS), JPMorgan (JPM), and Wells Fargo (WFC). Those are multi-hundred-billion-dollar companies. The disruption opportunity is huge.

But there’s a much, much bigger opportunity in disintermediating technology titans, like Alphabet and Amazon, which are trillion-dollar companies.

That’s why I love the idea of “dApps” – decentralized applications.

DApps are software applications built on the blockchain. This can be any application – a video media application like YouTube, a driver-rider app like Uber (UBER), a music streaming app like Spotify (SPOT).

The central link is that these apps are coded on the blockchain – and therefore, there is no central authority that “runs” the app and makes money from the app, either via subscription sales or digital ads. By removing that central authority, dApps create a new generation of truly free software applications.

Oftentimes, these dApps have underlying cryptocurrencies which are used as a form of in-app currency in the dApps, or incentive token for the app developers and blockchain participants.

The appreciating value for these cryptos represents the economic value of the dApp, i.e. instead of the app makers making money from digital ad sales, they make money by owning the dApp’s cryptocurrency, which rises in value as more folks use the dApp.

I firmly believe that dApps will disrupt everything. The future YouTube will be a dApp. The future Uber will be a dApp. The future Spotify will be a dApp.

Most, if not all, apps in the future will be dApps.

To illustrate my point, we have to go back to the dot-com boom…

During the internet craze of the late ‘90s and early aughts, the companies that succeeded did something very simple.

They didn’t reinvent the wheel.

They didn’t create brand new industries.

All they did was digitize what was already working in the physical world.

Malls were working in the 1990s. So, Amazon digitized malls and turned into the “digital mall.”

Movie theaters were working in the 1990s. So, Netflix digitized movie theaters and turned into the “digital movie theater.”

Newspapers and magazines were working in the 1990s. So, Meta digitized those industries and became the “digital publisher.”

The “winning playbook” in the dot-com boom was astoundingly simple. Find something that is working in the physical economy and digitize it.

The “winning playbook” in the Crypto Boom will be equally simple. Find something that is working in the digital economy and decentralize it.

The cryptocurrencies that do this the best will turn into 100X investment opportunities over the next decade.

This information – this way of viewing altcoins – could be the most valuable, most life-changing information you ever hear.

When you change your perspective on altcoins, you realize that they are not fantasy internet money… they are investments in systems that make our lives easier, more productive, and more efficient.

It’s just like backing Microsoft, Google, Uber, or Oracle in the early days.

When you buy an altcoin, you are essentially acting as a venture capitalist.

You are funding small startup companies that are trying to unseat entrenched, inefficient models and companies that gouge customers.

Investing in the best altcoins (aka “software programs”) right now is like taking an early stake in Adobe Systems (ADBE) in 1998. Adobe created the hugely popular “PDF” program… and the stock has soared 154,000% since then.

4 Cryptos to Buy for 2023

The good news is that you don’t need to be a tech master to make money investing in cryptocurrencies. You just need to be aware of larger trends and pay attention to the market.

Let me get you started with three cryptos you should look into.

Best Crypto #1: Ethereum

Ethereum (ETH-USD) is one of the older cryptocurrencies on the market, and it’s one you may have heard of. It’s the second-largest coin by market cap, but it’s still just about half the market cap of its larger counterpart, Bitcoin.

The crypto was developed by Vitalik Buterin – a developer and the co-founder of Bitcoin Magazine – and launched via an online crowdsale in 2014.

You should be interested in Ethereum for a few reasons…

For starters, it is a different animal than Bitcoin. The cryptocurrency claims to “build on Bitcoin’s innovation, with some big differences.” You can use Ethereum to send digital money, just like you can with BTC. But it’s also used for more than just payments.

Ethereum interacts with the Ethereum protocol – a global, open-source platform for decentralized applications. Decentralized applications (or dApps) are an incredible innovation that allow everyday people to participate in the app economy.

Decentralized finance (DeFi) is one of the fastest-growing subsectors in the cryptocurrency industry, and Ethereum accounted for 95% of total dApp transaction volume in 2020. That makes it one of the most widely used protocols in the space.

Ethereum is also a great investment for first-time crypto investors since it is available on a range of exchanges – including Coinbase, which is one of the best known.

Exchanges: Coinbase, Crypto.com, CoinEx, BinanceUS

Best Crypto #2: Radicle

Have you ever heard of GitHub? Don’t worry, most folks probably haven’t. For these people, it may be the most important platform you’ve never heard of…

GitHub is an online platform that software developers use to build, ship, store, and edit their code. It’s basically like “Google Docs for Coders,” and it’s the gold standard for how programmers store and share their code.

Not only that, it’s very valuable.

Microsoft acquired GitHub for $7.5 billion in 2018, and it’s performed exceptionally ever since.

Based on the fact that software stocks have broadly doubled since Microsoft bought out GitHub, we conservatively estimate GitHub to be worth $15 billion today… at least.

And now, this $15 billion giant in the software development world is about to be unseated by a tiny $57 million cryptocurrency called Radicle (RAD-USD) – the blockchain version of GitHub.

It’s a place where programmers can build, ship, store, and edit their code… but, as opposed to being built on a centralized server that is controlled by Microsoft (as is the case with GitHub), Radicle is built on a shared network of mini-servers ruled by the decentralized blockchain hierarchy.

The result is coder freedom.

Whereas GitHub is subject to censorship, hacks, data losses, and fees, Radicle has zero censorship. It’s impossible to hack, code never gets lost, and it’s an always-free platform.

It’s a dream solution for software developers.

That’s why smart money is flowing into this crypto.

Remember when Meta tried to create its own cryptocurrency with Libra? Well, in 2020, Libra’s co-creator Morgan Beller left the company to join a VC firm by the name of NFX. Since Beller joined the firm, NFX’s first crypto investment was… you guessed it… Radicle.

That’s a huge vote of confidence from someone who knows a lot about this space.

Exchanges: BinanceUS, CoinEx

Best Crypto #3: Cardano

Followers of the cryptocurrency world have likely heard of Cardano (ADA-USD) before. It’s one of the “major coins” – or one of the larger, well-known cryptocurrencies.

That said, it is distinct from other major coins in its underlying technology. And this distinction is what makes it the best big-name cryptocurrency to buy today.

Cardano is the eighth-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, with a $12.8 billion market cap as of this writing. Yet it is dwarfed in size by the top two tokens: Ethereum ($163 billion market cap) and Bitcoin ($340 billion market cap).

Our research suggests there is no reason why Cardano won’t grow to be as big, if not bigger, than both ETH and BTC.

Why? Because Cardano’s underlying technology is best-in-class.

The heart of Cardano’s world-leading technology is the crypto’s proof-of-consensus protocol.

You see… every cryptocurrency has a proof-of-consensus protocol. This is some set of rules and processes by which the blockchain underlying the cryptocurrency validates transactions on the blockchain, without needing any central arbiter – proof-of-consensus protocols are essentially the technological backbone of cryptocurrencies.

They are what make cryptos work. Without them, cryptos don’t work. And the better the proof-of-consensus protocol, the better the crypto.

Cardano has the best proof-of-consensus protocol in the world.

This protocol – dubbed Ouroboros – is the most rigorously tested proof-of-consensus protocol by the academic community. At least 70 academic papers have legitimized and validated this protocol. That’s unheard of and unrivaled in this space.

But what actually makes Ouroboros so special?

It most effectively solves the cryptocurrency optimization problem of maximizing efficiency, reducing environmental impact, and accelerating rewards.

The technicals are quite complex, but at a high level, these things are achieved through a unique proof-of-stake protocol that rewards participants for their honest participation, disincentivizes dishonest actors, creates a stable system, and results in zero wasted work.

It is technologically one of the most – if not the single-most – superior coins we have analyzed… and we’ve analyzed a bunch.

It’s no wonder the Cardano blockchain is already being used in places like education (for the issuance of academic certifications), retail (for product verification and anti-counterfeiting), agriculture (for supply chain tracking), government (for digitally native identity security), and more.

In the long run, Cardano will one of the most valuable cryptocurrencies in the world.

That’s why – amid this Crypto Crash – contrarian investors may want to think about buying (and holding) Cardano for the long haul…

Exchanges: Coinbase, Crypto.com, CoinEx, BinanceUS

Best Crypto #4: Near Protocol

That brings us to our final best crypto to buy for 2023 — Near Protocol (NEAR-USD).

Near is a layer-1 blockchain focused on being infinitely scalable while remaining secure and easy to use.

Many other blockchains make similar claims, but Near is different.

Not only was the project created with sharding in mind from the very start, but the way it implements sharding and finality are unique.

Theoretically, Near’s “Nightshade” is capable of infinite scaling. Nightshade has been in Phase 1 since September of this year, while Phases 2 and 3 are expected to be released next year.

Phase 2 implements sharding of both state and processing. Currently, only the state is sharded.

Phase 3 adds dynamic resharding – when things get really interesting. Shards can be created and merged based on current network utilization. This is when Near will become nearly infinitely scalable.

And who better to implement complex scaling technology than Near Protocol’s core team?

Prior to getting into blockchain development in 2017, the project’s founders worked at tech companies like Google, Microsoft, and MemSQL. For context: MemSQL is a distributed, sharded database (sound familiar?) that is used by Samsung, Goldman Sachs (GS), and Uber (UBER).

At the time, Illia Polosukhin and Alexander Skidanov were trying to further the field of program synthesis via research and participating in competitions (Skidanov even won Gold in ACM ICPC in 2008). But at some point, their friends convinced them to look into contributing to the budding blockchain space.

That’s when they surveyed the space and realized they wouldn’t be comfortable developing on any of the blockchains they found. So Alexander and Illia set out to craft Near Protocol — a blockchain designed from the ground up to cater to both developers and users.

It is proof-of-stake, sharded, and designed to be easily accessible via mobile phones.

The two founders were also able to rope in two other ICPC Gold medal winners, four former Googlers, and a few early MemSQL employees.

Near is also home to Aurora — an Ethereum EVM solution. Aurora enables teams to migrate their Ethereum dApps and benefit from Near’s sharding technology (and roughly 1,000x lower fees).

Octopus is also built on Near and lets developers create their own app-specific blockchains.

Near has been the recent target of some FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) due to FTX’s collapse, but the selloff was an overreaction.

The Near Foundation didn’t hold any funds on FTX, and both FTX and Alameda have insignificant portions of (locked) NEAR tokens. Together, they hold about 1.7% of the total supply, but these tokens will  slowly unlock over the next four years. And given that it has filed for bankruptcy, it’s unlikely FTX is able to sell any of these tokens anytime soon.

Getting back to the meat of Near, we’re particularly impressed by the following ecosystem of recent achievements:

• As of early November, Near passed the 20 million users milestone, thanks to the popularity of Sweat Economy, a Move-to-Earn platform built on Near that incentivizes healthy lifestyle decisions. This platform was the second most-used dApp and the most-downloaded finance app in 51 countries back in September.
• In early December, Near Protocol will have a notable presence at Art Basel, an international art fair held every year in Miami, Hong Kong, Switzerland, and Paris. There will be a Near art gallery, talks, interactive art workshops, and Near-sponsored happy hours in Wynwood, a historic art district.
• Binance Custody added support for NEAR, meaning institutional investors can take advantage of Binance’s super-secure storage platform.
• The Near Foundation recently announced that it has over five years of runway. Coupled with Near’s regular transparency reports (which it began publishing even prior to the recent demand for more transparency), this announcement gives us confidence in Near’s longevity, even if we find ourselves dealing with a drawn-out bear market.
• Near Protocol recently partnered with Google Cloud to provide developers with access to technical support and infrastructure as they build their dApps. This means developers will have an easier time building and scaling their dApps to keep up with demand.

Overall, we’re impressed with Near’s premise, tech, team, recent developments, and notable runway.

The layer-1 competition is tough, but Near has what it takes to make headway and expand its market share ahead of the next crypto boom.

And from there, it’ll just be a matter of continuing to execute as new developers and users flock to the ecosystem.

Exchanges: Coinbase, CoinEx

The Final Word

The FTX disaster was a tragedy and huge setback for the crypto industry. But it wasn’t a world-ender. It was an ugly high-profile bankruptcy, like the bankruptcies of Commodore, WorldCom, and Lehman Brothers. All three temporarily shook investor confidence at the time. But none of them ended their respective trends.

The Commodore bankruptcy didn’t kill the computer revolution. The WorldCom bankruptcy didn’t kill the internet revolution. The Lehman Brothers bankruptcy didn’t kill the financial revolution. And the FTX bankruptcy won’t kill the blockchain revolution.

The industry will move on, and we think it could do so quite quickly. 

The fact of the matter is that cryptos are a risk asset, and all risk assets are held hostage by macroeconomic developments right now. That’s why, last week, we told you that the course of macroeconomic developments over the next few months will determine the course of cryptos in 2023 – regardless of how the FTX fiasco plays out.

Stated plainly, if inflation falls and the Fed pivots in 2023, cryptos will soar and enter a new boom cycle that will stretch into 2024 with the fourth Bitcoin (BTC-USD) halving. If inflation stays hot and the Fed stays aggressive, cryptos will continue to struggle in 2023, and even a halving in 2024 may not stem the decline.

Fortunately, the data today overwhelmingly suggests that next year, inflation will crash and the Fed will pivot.

Therefore, we view the FTX fiasco as the “last shoe to drop,” if you will, in the 2022 crypto bear market. And we believe that from current levels, cryptos could soar over the next 12 months. 

Why?

All major leading indicators of inflation are crashing right now, setting the stage for massive and rapid disinflation in 2023.

Our macroeconomic outlook for 2023 is for inflation to crash, unemployment to rise, and for that to spark an early and sudden reversal in Fed policy.

The risk asset that will benefit most from this pivot will be cryptos. 

Whenever Fed policy eases – and money supply expands – cryptos soar. The BTC rally from $3,000 to $12,000 in 2019 was preceded by a reversal in money supply growth from contracting to expanding. Similarly, the BTC rally from $10,000 to $60,000 in 2020-21 was also preceded by significant money supply expansion.

Cryptos have been struggling throughout 2022 as money supply growth has shrunk. If Fed policy shifts in 2023, though, money supply growth should reaccelerate higher. If it does, cryptos will do what they always do when money supply growth reaccelerates: soar to the moon.

Sincerely,