OVERVIEW

Time’s Up, 2024—Pour One Out for the Market Predictions That Aged Like Milk 🥛 

Source: giphy

Before we dive in, here’s today’s crypto market heatmap:

Source: Santiment

And here’s a look at crypto’s total and altcoin market cap YTD:

Source: TradingView

New In Three Sentences
Crypto News 📰

🔎 Chainlink SVR: Finally, Liquidation MEV Pays You Instead

Chainlink’s Smart Value Recapture (SVR) lets DeFi protocols reclaim some of that sweet MEV that used to flow straight into liquidators’ pockets. Working with Aave, Chainlink basically auctions off the right to pair the price update with the liquidation in one neat, front-runnable bundle—but the revenue goes back to the protocol and the oracle itself. That means a chunk of the liquidation gravy returns to your favorite lending dApp (and helps sustain oracles). Chainlink blog.

🔮 2025 Trends by Ava Labs: AI, No-Code Chains, and More

Ava Labs predicts that launching your own blockchain will soon be as easy as creating a Squarespace site, courtesy of AvaCloud. Meanwhile, consumer wallets will morph into catch-all super-apps, more institutions will experiment with DeFi behind the scenes, and sports leagues will come crawling back to blockchain—bigger than ever. And while stablecoins continue their unstoppable climb, AI + crypto is slated to explode (in the good sense). Avalanche blog.

📦 Hedera’s Block Streams: One Big Data Party

Hedera’s unifying its record streams, event logs, sidecars—you name it—into a single Protobuf-based feed that’s cryptographically verifiable. Every “block” comes signed by a majority of nodes, bundling state changes, events, and transactions in one shot. Hedera’s basically going “modular blockchain” with a robust new spin. Hedera blog.

🔑 IRS Finalizes “Unlawful” Rule That Demands KYC for DeFi

In its last throes of the year, the IRS took a sledgehammer to decentralized finance by finalizing a rule that would force DeFi front-ends to collect users’ personal data—and potentially withhold service if you don’t cough up your ID. President-elect Trump, who ironically has a DeFi project in the works (World Liberty Financial), might have a trick up his sleeve to overturn it, and DeFi bigwigs from Jake Chervinsky to Uniswap’s Hayden Adams are calling the move “unlawful” and “dead on arrival.” The Defiant.

TECHNICAL ANALYSIS
And This Is Where We’re At 👀 

Remember this weekly Total Crypto Market Cap chart back on December 9?

December 9, 2024, Total Crypto Currency Market Cap Weekly Chart – Click to enlarge

And here’s where we’re at this week:

Total Market Cap Weekly Chart – Click to enlarge.

The major gaps between the Tenkan-Sen and candlestick bodies are resolved. That’s one of the first signs a ‘bottom’ is developing and/or in. And there are some other pieces of technical data to support that.

Total Market Cap Weekly Chart – Click to enlarge.

There’s hidden bullish divergence developing between price and the Composite Index – a bullish continuation signal.

Total Market Cap Daily Chart – Click to enlarge.

Shifting over to the daily chart, things get a little more sloppy – mostly because the daily is stuck inside the Cloud.

If the daily closes above the Tenkan-Sen and Senkou Span A, that’s another heads-up warning that bulls might take control. Confirmation of bullish continuation will likely occur when the Composite Index (red) crosses and closes above its slow average (yellow) and the DTO closes above the zero line. 🧠 

STOCKTWITS COMMUNITY INSIGHTS
Share Your Top Trade Ideas For 2025! 🤩 

We recently recapped an amazing 2024 on Stocktwits, but with the calendar now turning to 2025, we want to shift our focus to the future…and you can help!

We’re gathering the community’s top ideas for 2025 and giving out Stocktwits Edge to some of our favorites. Come share your highest conviction plays and see where the Stocktwits community is focusing on in the new year. 🤑 

Source: Stocktwits.com

News In Three Sentences
Metaverse, NFT, & Gaming News 🎮️

👾 Otherworld’s ‘Solo Leveling’ on Avalanche

Get ready for dungeon raids and monster-hunting Web3 style: Otherworld is dropping “Solo Leveling: Unlimited” digital collectibles on its new L1 chain, built on Avalanche. If you’re a fan of the 14.3-billion-views webtoon, you can snag monster cards, level them up, and earn rewards in a “C2E” system. Avalanche blog.

✨ Astar Network: From a Token to a Thriving Metaverse

Astar spent 2024 expanding beyond its L1 roots—tying up with big Japanese brands, rolling out dApp Staking v3, and launching Soneium to supercharge ASTR’s use case. The plan for 2025? Go all-in on bridging Web2, forging new dev tools, and letting ASTR become the cross-ecosystem glue that holds everything together. Astar Network blog.

🔐 Lock Your $MNT to Snag 1M $UXLINK

UXLINK is this monstrous web3 social token with 30M verified users behind it, and they’re tossing out 1M tokens for folks who lock $MNT and stake UXLINK. The longer you lock, the more “power” you accumulate. Just don’t forget to use the same wallet for everything, or you’ll forfeit your free candy. Mantle blog.

🐝 The Buzz About BEES: The Meme Token That Actually Does Something

BUZZ is a gaming platform on Metis, rocking 1.7 million users in Telegram-based mini-apps. Their new meme token, BEES, is more than a silly brand name: it’s a direct on-ramp to deeper GameFi feats like farming, spinning, and treasure chest antics. So sure, it’s silly, but silly with utility is the best kind of silly. Metis blog.

🎁 Axie Discord Rewards: 2,000 AXS for Chatting Your Face Off

Axie Infinity’s dishing out 2,000 AXS to the top 100 super-chatty folks in its Discord. If you’ve been spamming emojis and dropping alpha all year, congrats—your time in the trenches might pay off in shiny tokens. And if you’re new? Now’s the perfect time to hop in, show some hype, and maybe snag a spot in future giveaways. Axie Infinity blog.

News In Three Sentences
DeFi, DEX, and Lending Protocol News 🏦

💱 Camelot DEX Invades Aleph Zero EVM

Fresh off Arbitrum with $75 million in TVL, Camelot’s now live on Aleph Zero EVM to supercharge your DeFi habits. V2 and V3 options cater to both the old-school liquidity crowd and adventurous concentrated fans, so take your pick and farm away. AlephZero blog.

🔗 Band Protocol Hooks Up with OKX X Layer

By integrating with OKX’s ZK-powered L2, Band Protocol ensures dApps get real-world data faster than you can say “price feed.” It’s a sweet combo of Ethereum familiarity and ZK innovation, so devs can piggyback on Band’s secure oracles without trusting shady centralized data. Band Protocol blog.

⚙️ 64.85% of Ethereum Transactions Are Parallel-Ready—Yes, You’re Leaving Performance on the Table

According to Sei, it turns out nearly two-thirds of Ethereum’s traffic doesn’t need to be stuck in single-file lines, which means blockchains are basically that intersection with no left-turn signal. Parallelizing these transactions could net a 2–3x speedup (hello, faster DeFi). Sei blog.

⛓️ Alchemy Chain: Fiat and Crypto Sitting in a Tree

Alchemy Chain wants to make paying for coffee with crypto as easy as whipping out a debit card—no weird bridging, no cringe. By strapping chain abstraction onto a robust Layer-1, they’re looking to unify your grandma’s dollar bills with your shiny digital coins. It’s basically telling the future of payments: “Let’s stop picking sides and just get stuff paid for already.” Alchemy Pay blog.

🔥 How Many Records Did 1inch Break in 2024?

Swap volume soared to $155B, user count to 10M, and a jaw-dropping 53M completed swaps—turns out, people like good liquidity. Classic swaps grabbed a lion’s share (a neat $120.5B), while Fusion swaps are steadily catching the whales’ eye. And then they dropped Fusion+, which only launched in Beta in September but still racked up $56M in cross-chain volume in just a few months. 1inch Blog.

LINKS
Links That Don’t Suck 🔗

👩‍⚖️ Solana co-founder faces legal battle over alleged crypto theft from ex-wife

😱 U.S. Bitcoin strategic reserve could push Bitcoin to $1 million, Bitwise exec says

🗑️ Venezuelans ditching the Dollar in favor of crypto – report

🥷 The Blockchain Bandit is back after 5 years, moves $172 million in Ethereum

😠 US Treasury hacked by Chinese cybercriminals exploiting third-party software

Get In Touch 📬

Follow our social channels for great, real-time content on Stocktwits and Twitter. And check out our YouTube channel for in-depth video content! 📲

Email me (Jonathan Morgan) your feedback; I’d love to hear from you. 📧

Want to sponsor this newsletter and reach hundreds of thousands of crypto enthusiasts? Reach us here. 👍

Terms & Conditions 📝

Securities Disclaimer: STOCKTWITS IS NOT A TAX ADVISOR, BROKER, FINANCIAL ADVISOR OR INVESTMENT ADVISOR. THE SERVICE IS NOT INTENDED TO PROVIDE TAX, LEGAL, FINANCIAL OR INVESTMENT ADVICE, AND NOTHING ON THE SERVICE SHOULD BE CONSTRUED AS AN OFFER TO SELL, A SOLICITATION OF AN OFFER TO BUY, OR A RECOMMENDATION FOR ANY SECURITY. Trading in such securities can result in immediate and substantial losses of the capital invested. You should only invest risk capital, and not capital required for other purposes. You alone are solely responsible for determining whether any investment, security or strategy, or any other product or service, is appropriate or suitable for you based on your investment objectives and personal and financial situation. You should also consult an attorney or tax professional regarding your specific legal or tax situation. The Content is to be used for informational and entertainment purposes only and the Service does not provide investment advice for any individual. Stocktwits, its affiliates and partners specifically disclaim any and all liability or loss arising out of any action taken in reliance on Content, including but not limited to market value or other loss on the sale or purchase of any company, property, product, service, security, instrument, or any other matter. You understand that an investment in any security is subject to a number of risks, and that discussions of any security published on the Service will not contain a list or description of relevant risk factors. In addition, please note that some of the stocks about which Content is published on the Service have a low market capitalization and/or insufficient public float. Such stocks are subject to more risk than stocks of larger companies, including greater volatility, lower liquidity and less publicly available information. Read the full terms & conditions here. 🔍

Third-Party Advertiser Disclaimer: Please read the prospectus carefully before investing in the Fund. Foreside Fund Services, LLC is the Marketing Agent for the Fund. The Fund holds Bitcoin; however, an investment in the Fund is not a direct investment in Bitcoin. As a non-diversified and single industry fund, the value of the shares may fluctuate more than shares invested in a broader range of industries. Extreme volatility, regulatory changes, and exposure to digital asset exchanges may impact the value of Bitcoin and, consequently, the value of the Fund. The value of the Fund relates directly to the value of the underlying digital asset, the value of which may be highly volatile and subject to fluctuations due to a number of factors.

Author Disclosure: The author of this newsletter holds positions in ADA, LTC, IMX, WMT, COPI, MIN, AGIX, ALGO, DOGE, ZEC, AVAX, XLM, XTZ, and NEAR. 📋