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Today’s Stories:
6 Predictions for Crypto in 2024: Pantera’s Paul Veradittakit
Blockchain Tech Predictions for 2024, From Experts at Ripple, Coinbase, a16z, Starknet
ETFs, Halving, Upgrades – What to Expect With Bitcoin Next Year
7 Predictions About the Crypto Lending Landscape in 2024
2024: The Year of Regulatory Compromises
5 Predictions for Real World Assets in 2024
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This episode was hosted by Noelle Acheson. “Markets Daily” is executive produced by Jared Schwartz and produced and edited by Eleanor Pahl. All original music by Doc Blust and Colin Mealey.
Audio Transcript: This transcript has not been edited and may contain errors.
It’s Thursday, December 21st, 2023 and this is Markets Daily from CoinDesk. My name is Noelle Acheson, CoinDesk collaborator and author of the Crypto is Macro Now newsletter on Substack. On today’s show we’re talking about market moves, crypto predictions, consumer confidence and more. So you don’t miss an episode, be sure to follow the podcast on your platform of choice, and turn on notifications. And just a reminder, CoinDesk is a news source and does not provide investment advice.
Now, a markets roundup.
So much for hopes of a quiet market in the runup to the holidays. Crypto markets saw a burst of optimism yesterday, with bitcoin at one stage rising above 44,200 dollars. After a brief pullback in late trading, the market has resumed its climb.
According to CoinDesk Indices, at 9 a.m. Eastern time this morning, bitcoin was up six tenths of a percent over the past 24 hours, trading at 44,122 dollars. This is the 17th consecutive day above 40,000. Earlier today, Ether was up a quarter of a percent, trading at 2,249 dollars.
Elsewhere, Solana was up 12%, Polkadot up 8% and the NEAR protocol token is up 21%.
In macro matters, the U.S. consumer is feeling much more cheerful these days, and it’s not just festive cheer.
In yesterday’s episode I talked about signs that the slump in the housing market was turning around, and how this suggested increasing consumer confidence – after all, people don’t tend to dive into big ticket purchases if they’re worried about their income prospects, and there are few bigger ticket purchases than buying a home.
Well, yesterday we got a new set of consumer confidence data that confirms this. Every month the Conference Board releases an index based on a survey of consumers’ attitudes toward current and future business conditions, current and future job prospects, and income expectations six months out.
The results for December were surprising. The latest reading rose by the most since early 2021, reaching the highest level since July and coming in much higher than average forecasts. The report showed optimism across the board, from job prospects and future incomes to overall business conditions.
More Americans say they intend to buy a car, go on vacation and purchase large appliances than in previous months. The share of consumers who said jobs were plentiful rose to a five-month high. And in a piece of news the Fed will like, expectations for inflation 12 months out fell to the lowest since late 2020.
This good news wasn’t enough to stop a large slump in U.S. stocks, however.
Yesterday, U.S. stock indices had a bad day.
All three major indices plummeted late in the trading session to close almost 1.5% down, the worst declines in weeks. Analysts are attributing the sharp turn to a mix of factors, including a build-up of bearish positions in short-term options, thin pre-holiday trading volumes, and signals that stocks had reached overbought levels. However, optimism seems to be returning, as futures point to a strong opening today.
In Europe, stocks were mixed yesterday. The FTSE 100 closed more than 1% higher on the back of better than expected UK inflation data, while the German DAX was flat and the broader Eurostoxx 600 was down a third of a percent. So far today, sentiment is weak, with the main indices down around four tenths of a percent.
Sentiment was also mixed in trading today, with Japan’s Nikkei index down 1.6%, the Shanghai Composite up six tenths of a percent, and the Hang Seng flat.
In commodities, oil prices were largely unchanged yesterday as traders digest the changes to global shipping routes due to the heightened risk of sailing through the Red Sea. This morning, however, a surprise increase in U.S. crude inventories is pushing prices lower, with the Brent Crude benchmark down nine tenths on the day, trading at 78 dollars and 50 cents a barrel.
Gold is holding on to recent gains, trading at 2,036 dollars an ounce.
Stay with us – after the break we’re going to look at some interesting predictions for 2024.
Welcome back!
In this section, I want to highlight some of the many predictions you can find in CoinDesk’s Crypto 2024 series, which features a series of articles from industry experts on where they see our markets and ecosystem heading in the coming year.
And tune in tomorrow for an interview with Arca’s CIO Jeff Dorman in which we discuss his current take on crypto markets and his outlook for what’s ahead.
Now, here are just some of the predictions published so far in CoinDesk Crypto 2024 series, and we’ll publish links to the articles in the show notes.
Paul Veradittakit of Pantera Capital expects Bitcoin to be one of the top ecosystems to look out for in 2024. The three main catalysts he sees are the fourth Bitcoin halving expected in April, the expected approval of several spot ETFs, and a rise in programmability features, both on the base protocol as well as layer-2s and other scalability solutions. He also thinks we’ll see a rise of DeFi applications using bitcoin wrapped in other token technologies.
David Duong, head of institutional research for Coinbase, also thinks we’ll see more exploration of bitcoin utility through increased usage of Ordinals, layer-2 scaling solutions and bitcoin-based smart contracts, and points out that this will mean higher base layer fees going forward.
Cory Klippsten, CEO of bitcoin-focused platform Swan, suggests that bitcoin could attract attention from individuals, institutions and governments seeking to hedge against growing global financial uncertainty – in other words, watch for growing demand from outside the main financial centers.
Mauricio Di Bartolomeo, the co-founder of Ledn, expects bitcoin and ether spot and derivatives trading volumes to shift from unregulated and decentralized venues, to regulated ones as institutional investors get more active in the crypto market. He also thinks that the listing of spot bitcoin ETFs will be a strong positive for market infrastructure, as more crypto and traditional market makers pick up the arbitrage opportunities between spot bitcoin, derivatives and the ETFs. This in turn should encourage the growth of the bitcoin lending market.
On regulation, crypto and finreg lawyer Michael Selig of the firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher is not hopeful that SEC Chair Gary Gensler will let up on his crusade against the crypto industry, he does believe that the securities regulator will need to make compromises next year as the agency is getting significant legal pushback, and not just from the crypto industry.
And finally, Collin Erickson and Mac Naggar of tokenization platform RWA.xyz expect to see a proliferation of new stablecoin launches with a wider variety of collateral and compliance frameworks. They also think we’ll start to see some stablecoins offer incentives such as yield, but are betting that new entrants won’t make much of a dent in the market share of the current leaders USDT and USDC.
There’s plenty more to digest from these contributors, and CoinDesk will be publishing more predictions over the coming days, so be sure to check them out.
Of course, if only we had a crystal ball.
