Original author: Miles Deutscher

Original compilation: Frank, Foresight News

If you want to maximize your profits in this bull market, you have to choose the right narrative.

Last cycle we witnessed the explosive growth of tokens in the L1, DeFi, and Metaverse categories, and in this cycle, institutions are pouring money into these narratives.

We have the opportunity to enter early. In this article, I will introduce the segmented narrative of each industry in the bull market and why these vertical tracks are worthy of attention. Of course I am interested in other areas as well, but this article will focus on the main trends that stand out in particular.

The reason I chose these narratives is that I believe they are still in the early stages of the hype cycle. After all, recognizing when a narrative is in its early stages is an important skill to have in the cryptocurrency space.

1.DePIN 

DePIN stands for Decentralized Physical Infrastructure, which is a blockchain protocol that encourages decentralized communities to build and maintain physical hardware. Users who invest resources and contribute to the network will receive corresponding token rewards.

DePIN is a vast field spanning multiple multi-billion dollar hardware areas:

• cloud storage

• Calculate ability

• Wireless sensor networks, etc.

Messari predicts that the total market value of these DePIN industries will reach $3.2 trillion by 2028.

Existing products such as RNDR, FIL, AKT are representative projects of current solutions, and there are many interesting upcoming solutions such as AethirCloud.

2.Artificial Intelligence

2023 is a breakthrough year for the artificial intelligence (AI) industry, with more than $50 billion in new investment flowing into the industry.

The amount of AI-related venture capital investment in 2023 is as high as $50 billion, and even this only scratches the surface of AIs potential.

As AI grows exponentially, its both scary and exciting to imagine what the next 2-3 years will bring (let alone 10).

Cryptocurrency and AI have yet to fully take hold, and many current solutions simply use AI as a buzzword and treat it as an AI agent (trading around major events/hype) rather than a long-term fundamental investment.

However, AI and cryptocurrencies may intersect in many interesting ways in the future:

• Cryptocurrency-driven reputation system for GPU leasing;

• AI robots for trading and forecasting;

• Blockchain-based AI training incentives;

• Digital media certification;

KyleSamani also wrote a greatarticle, details the potential intersection of AI and cryptography, expanding on more potential use cases. (Fun fact: he wrote much of the article using AI).

I strongly believe that some of the best performers this cycle will be AI tokens. My current strategy is to trade AI tokens as proxies around major events such as conferences/press releases/announcements, but I allocate a fair portion of stablecoins to new AI projects.

3.RWAs

Real World Assets (RWAs) have been gaining a lot of momentum recently, especially after the endorsement from BlackRock CEO Larry Fink. After all, when the CEO of the world’s largest asset management company has repeatedly advocated the tokenization of assets, it’s hard for me to disagree. RWAs are feeling optimistic.

RWAs refer to the tokenization of real-world assets (such as real estate, treasuries, bonds, gold, etc.) on the blockchain.

This will add:

• Efficiency (reducing costs without the need for a broker);

• Accessibility (fragmentation and more liquidity);

RWAs have access to huge markets such as real estate ($326 trillion), global bonds ($124 trillion) and gold ($12 trillion).

Over the next few weeks, I will be publishing a full in-depth topic on RWAs (and my favorite altcoins).

4. Games

When I think of industries that could truly attract millions of new retail users, the first thing that comes to mind is gaming.

It is also one of the most well-funded crypto industries, with more than $14.4 billion in total funding since 2019, with the majority of investment inflows into the cryptocurrency game coming in 2021/2022.

Games take years to make, so were just now starting to hit a development inflection point.

Between 2024 and 2026, well likely realize the true size of this funding with a flood of new quality games. , and cryptocurrency games add two very important verticals to traditional games:

• Be able to have real and verifiable ownership of game assets;

• Able to financially reward/benefit game users rather than purely sucking away liquidity in a closed in-game economy;

When investing in the gaming industry, I like to take a layered approach, in order of weight:

• Game infrastructure: L1 and L2, SDK, etc.;

• Game Studio: Provides multiple gaming experiences at the same time;

• Individual games: highest returns, highest risks;

5.BRC-20 

Since its launch, the BRC-20 token has continued to rapidly gain traction, creating demand for block space and bringing new use cases to the Bitcoin blockchain.

First, what is a BRC-20 token?

Inscriptions attach data to satoshis (the smallest unit of Bitcoin), and BRC-20 refers to an experimental standard for attaching JSON codes to sats based on inscriptions.

Despite being in an experimental stage, the BRC-20 token has a market capitalization of over $2.5 billion. As the Bitcoin story heats up with ETFs and the upcoming halving, BRC-20 tokens are poised to benefit.

The BRC-20 ecosystem is still relatively nascent and lacks quality infrastructure, and I have made a small bet in this space and am always keeping an eye on new projects. With many upcoming products coming out, there are also many airdrop opportunities.

6.Restaking

I view Restaking as a new version of this cycle’s DeFi Ponzi scheme from the previous cycle.

During the 2021 bull market, we witnessed an insatiable pursuit of yield due to bullish market sentiment, and if we enter a broader bull market (as I expect), demand for yield is expected to return.

We are already seeing early signs of this happening, with the EigenLayer airdrop also being a major catalyst for the industry.

So, what is Restaking?

Simply put, it allows you to reuse your already staked ETH across multiple other protocols. This allows you to stack your earnings on top of your main ETH earnings and gain access to protocol airdrops.

EigenLayer is the middleware that pioneered the concept of re-staking, but interestingly, most of the re-staking is actually the corresponding points system.

EigenLayer will be one of the largest airdrops in 2024, which is why more than $1.4 billion is locked in the platform (Foresight News notes, more than $3 billion at the time of publication).

7.ZK

ZK technology is one of the biggest crypto innovations of the decade.

It is a type of cryptography that proves the validity of a message without revealing any identifying details.

ZK helps with:

• Reduce network congestion (helps with scalability);

• Add privacy protection elements and support new applications;

• Enhance network security;

Many projects are now leveraging ZK technology, including Linea, zkSync, Manta, Polygon, etc.

While scalability has always been one of the more prominent use cases, ZK proves to have applications across many verticals.

An interesting example is Chainlink’s “DECO” project, which uses ZK proofs to ensure tamper-proof content transmission across Internet protocols.

Decentralized identity oracles like zkMe are another important use case, especially for KYC and AML compliance.

Due to the introduction of ZK technology, many new use cases are unlocked.

The above are the 7 sectors that I think are most suitable for the bull market.