State of Crypto Markets - The 401 Perspective

💰As Registered Investment Advisors, we have a long term view of all markets; especially cryptoassets. With a combined 15+ years in the space, we have a deep understanding of the key market participants, infrastructure, opportunities and inefficiencies. In this edition of Token Advice, our goal is to give you some data and insights on some of the things that caught our eye in the first quarter of 2024.

🎯Clearly, the biggest news to start the year has been the success of the launch of Bitcoin ETFs. The inflows have brought in 12 billion of new capital with the ETFs now owning more than $60B of Bitcoin. When taking a look at individual performance, Bitcoin was up 68% in the first quarter of 2024. Also worth noting, according to Checkonchain.com, the Bitcoin realized cap has reached all time highs with more than $560B in wealth invested and stored in Bitcoin. When looking at Ethereum, the second largest cryptoasset, it was up 60% in the first quarter. In comparison, the total crypto market capitalization for the entire space increased by 64%.

💡Now, let’s take a look at some data insights and charts we find interesting! According to Patrick Scott, tokenized treasuries onchain have increased 10x in the last 15 months. In addition, the Ethereum Blockchain generated an incredible $369M profit in the first quarter, according to Token Terminal. Tomasz Tonguz states, “If Ethereum were to trade on the New York Stock Exchange or the NASDAQ, it would top the net income margin (%) charts; with Microsoft, Adobe, and Veeva thereafter.” Lastly, according to the Policygenius 2024 Financial Planning Survey, it shows younger generations are almost equally likely to own cryptocurrency at 21%, as they are to own real estate at 20%; and more likely to try financial “hacks.”

Base, the layer 2 blockchain built by Coinbase to help scale Ethereum, has seen unprecedented growth to start the year. Its growth has been across every onchain vertical from DeFi to NFTs to gaming and more.

Farcaster, a sufficiently decentralized social network built onchain, has nearly 10x'd its daily active users since the start of the year. With each user having an onchain identity, Farcaster allows them to port that identity across different apps in the ecosystem (Warpcast and Supercast to name a few). With wallets connected to profiles, Farcaster frames allow for user to complete onchain transactions directly in their social feed.

Despite the overall crypto market sitting just below all-time highs, the number of onchain users continue to hit all-time highs.