Crypto trends to keep an eye on in 2024

After a freezing bear market in 2022, 2023 was a welcome bounce back. Witnessing the crypto market cap surge 150% amidst the fastest U.S. interest rate hikes in history was remarkable. At CoinMENA, our trading volume jumped over 45% year-over-year and we closed off the year by obtaining our second operating license from Dubai’s VARA, solidifying our position as the most stable crypto-to-fiat platform in the region.?

While it was a solid year, we feel like we’re just getting warmed up, and 2024 will be the first year of CoinMENA’s second phase, the accelerated growth phase. I’ll have a lot more to share about CoinMENA’s exciting plans in the coming weeks, but for now, here are a few industry trends/ predictions (could be wishful thinking) that I’m following:

• Bitcoin Game Theory: Institutions will start allocating a portion of their portfolio to bitcoin. Apple alone has 160 billion USD sitting in cash, the Bank of International Settlement shared a document that proposes a standardized disclosure table and set of templates for banks’ crypto-asset exposures. In a world of infinite fiat money creation, expect capital to flow to the scarcest monetary good, which is bitcoin. It will be interesting to observe the behavior of countries (sovereign wealth funds etc.) and these trillion-dollar asset management firms when bitcoin’s price reaches new all-time highs. With the impending ETF approval, it will be much easier for large companies to add Bitcoin to their balance sheets, and I think we’ll see quite a bit of this in 2024.
• Stablecoin Adoption: Throughout the bull and bear markets of crypto, one thing is evident: Demand for U.S. dollar stablecoins like USDC & USDT is the biggest use case for crypto so far. Roughly 70% of all on-chain transactions are related to stablecoins. As more fiat currencies collapse and access to USD becomes harder in emerging markets, expect easy access to digital U.S. dollars to accelerate. Anyone curious why I have this view, please try to send 100,000 USD from an emerging market and compare it with sending 100,000 USD via USDT on Tron or USDC on Stellar. The difference in cost, speed, and self-sovereignty is insane. Expect more people and companies to process payroll, remittances, and other cross-border payments in stablecoins.
• Cryptographic identify proof: AI burst onto the scene and is flooding the market with content. In a world awash with deep fakes and synthetic content, determining “personhood” will become increasingly challenging. The traditional identity verification methods are no match to AI. Cryptographic personhood proofs could become the only way to verify if you are interacting with a human or an AI. I think we’ll see this in action or in products, so not only in theory and posts like this one.
• Ethereum’s comeback (Layer 2): Transacting on Ethereum has become expensive, as retail users preferred Solana and other more affordable chains in 2023. Given that Ethereum has the largest number of developers working across its ecosystem, I expect Ethereum to make a strong comeback this year with both transaction costs going down, and Layer 2’s scaling solutions thriving.
• Regulated crypto businesses will thrive: Investors will increasingly seek regulated service providers as investors/users prefer to work with companies with proper financial licenses (sorry, but Bahamas licenses don’t really count) and are set up like a financial institution (clear ownership structure, Board of Directors, etc). CoinMENA is a thriving regulated business, so I am certainly biased here.
• Big banks issue tokenized assets: After many false starts, I think we’ll see traditional financial assets on-chain. Stablecoins is the best example of this, but I think in 2024 we’ll see more established financial institutions issue on-chain traditional assets like commodities, USD Treasuries, etc.?
• UAE crypto growth to continue: Investments in regulators, infrastructure, etc will pay off as Dubai yet again proves doubters wrong. After every bear market, the nay-sayers celebrate, while the builders utilize that time to build. Dubai launched the first independent crypto regulator during a bear market (Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority) and Abu Dhabi has been making huge strides, and they will reap the fruits of their conviction now as the market begins to turn bullish.

These are the trends I’m keeping an eye on, but nothing will bring more people to crypto than NGU (number go up), and the setup for crypto in 2024 seems ideal to reach new all-time highs.