 I wouldn't be surprised by $1,000 salon at the end of the cycle for Ethereum. That would potentially put us all the way out towards, you know, 14,000 bucks. If you're bullish on Ethereum, then you need to be more bullish on there too. In this video, we dive into five tokens that we think could form a solid altcoin portfolio for 2024. In our selection, we focused on what we believe are the most promising crypto sectors in 2024. If you want to build an altcoin portfolio but have no idea where to start, or you don't want to miss out on the next altcoin season, this is a video that you cannot miss. Before we get into it, I want to stress that this video is made for educational purposes and does not constitute financial advice. I also want to disclose that I own some of the coins covered in this video. Before we dive in, I'm thrilled to announce the upcoming return of BlockShow, the leading event in the crypto and blockchain industry. This time, it's teaming up with BlockDown, a pioneer in the Web3 conference scene. Get ready to join us in Hong Kong for this crypto celebration from May 8th to 9th. Don't miss out. Click the link in the description to learn more about this event. And remember, early bird tickets are limited. I'm Giovanni, your host. Let's get started. While Bitcoin is the king of crypto, Ethereum claims the throne in the realm of altcoins. No altcoin portfolio is complete without some E. Here is why. At the time of recording, Ethereum boasts the largest blockchain in terms of TVL, or Total Value Locked, with over 49 billion dollars. TVL is crucial as it reflects the trust of developers and investors in the platform. The money, regardless of what happens in these other chains, the money is on Ethereum. It seems to be the most secure and trusted and safest in the perception of people who are participating in DeFi. One of the main drivers of this dominance is the narrative around the potential approval of an Ethereum ETF. This approval would be monumental for Ethereum, as an ETF would lead to a massive inflow of institutional capital into the ecosystem. I wouldn't be surprised by $20,000 Ethereum. A 4 or 5X is nothing in a real bull market for any of these large cap tokens. Another bullish catalyst for Ethereum is the Dancun upgrade. This upgrade promises substantial improvements to Ethereum's scalability through layer two scaling solutions. We'll talk about those shortly. Also, for more insights on Dancun, check out our latest dedicated interview. The link is in the description. Ethereum's current bull market is unique, since it is the first one occurring after the protocol's transition to a proof-of-stake system. Stakers have been ripping yields by staking ETH on chain. The amount of staked ETH has recently reached an all-time high of around 25% of the overall supply. This reduction in circulating ETH theoretically bodes well for prices. Over here, we can see that the probabilistic ranges on the weekly, as far as Q4 goes, that's essentially six to eight months out, starting with September, brings us all the way up to at the 30% level, about $10,000. So we essentially expect, what that means is that we essentially expect a 30% probability of price to be somewhere in this range here by that date. In the end of year, December, that puts the 50% range high, around $17,000. 618 level will be $22,000, getting really crazy there, and $78,000, much higher than that. Not saying things are going to get there, but as you can see, we can actually generate probabilities as to how likely those things are. We'll also go over what, if present, would indicate that these projections are going to fall flat, and you're going to see something else happen. For Ethereum, that same number would be $2,200, kind of far away for right now. In fact, I'd even say you could probably move that up to $2,500, although that's not a major difference to begin with. It's essential to acknowledge that Ethereum is not flawless. Despite numerous upgrades, it grapples with two persistent issues, high gas fees and slow transaction throughput. As a result, an increasing number of transactions on Ethereum are being processed via Layer 2 scaling solutions. This is both a necessary step to address scalability issues and a potential bearish catalyst for its prices. Whenever you do a transaction on Layer 2, you aggregate a bunch of transactions. So its much lower cost has a much lower demand for Ethereum coin. The demand for Ethereum doesn't increase unless the DeFi activity surged by 20 times, which I don't think is going to happen for the next six months. That is why you may want to consider including Layer 2 tokens in your crypto portfolio, and that is the topic of the next section. If you're bullish on Ethereum, then you need to be more bullish on Layer 2. Yes, one of the hottest crypto sectors in 2024 is Layer 2 scaling solutions. These are protocols that aim to solve Ethereum's scalability issues by providing fast and affordable transactions. A good example is Optimism, a blue chip Layer 2 solution for the Ethereum blockchain. Its secret sauce is called Optimistic Roll-ups. Essentially, an Optimistic Roll-up is a blockchain that piggybacks its security on another parent chain, in this case Ethereum. That means transactions are recorded in a trustless manner on Optimism and later secured on the Ethereum blockchain. This guarantees faster and cheaper transactions while maintaining the high security of Ethereum's base Layer. Why are they called Optimistic? Because every transaction is considered to be honest by default until it gets challenged by a validator. The Optimism protocol is governed by a DAO, a decentralized autonomous organization called the Optimism Collective. The OP token is used by holders to vote on governance issues. Optimism was launched in mid-2022 and its start wasn't great. The token's price crashed by over 80% at launch due to a poorly conducted airdrop. But since then, the situation has changed dramatically. Optimism currently supports hundreds of decentralized apps, including blue chips such as Uniswap, SushiSwaps and Oneinch. Last year, Coinbase, the largest crypto exchange in the US, launched base, its Layer 2 blockchain using Optimism technology. However, Optimism's most ambitious plan is building the Superchain project, a network connecting Layer 2 blockchains that share the same development stack, bridging communication layer and security, basically the ultimate scaling solution for Ethereum. Last year, Optimism made an important step forward in the direction by completing the bedrock hard fork, which reduced transaction fees by 40% and depositing confirmation time from 10 minutes to less than 1 minute. Optimism's and Arbitrum seem to be the leadership right now in terms of volumes and deposits, TVL, and history has shown us that to beat those leaders, it takes a long time. Now, let's talk about some downsides. The main one is that Optimism faces harsh competition from other similar Layer 2 solutions. Examples are Arbitrum, which also uses a variation of optimistic rollups, or Polygon, which is based on ZK rollups, a privacy-focused technology. I would expect a lot of Ethereum Layer 2s to outperform Ethereum when Ethereum starts to perform well. It's almost like a leverage play on trading Ethereum. So, if you decide to invest in Optimism, remember to keep an eye on the competition as well. For Optimism, I really don't think that we can go that far out here, to be honest with you. Basically, beginning of May, 50% level would be 7.5 bucks, 61.8 level would be 8.5 bucks, 78.6 level would be 10 bucks. For Optimism, that would be below 3.5, let's call it, below 3.5 bucks. Sorry, make that $3, $3. That's where things start to fall apart. The latest bear market exposed the fragility of centralized exchanges. Major CFI platforms, such as FTX or Celsius, turned out to be fraudulent. That's why a crucial sector to keep an eye on in 2024 is DeFi, particularly Dexis, decentralized exchanges. One of the biggest players in the field is Uniswap. Uniswap is a decentralized exchange, a protocol that uses an automated market maker to allow users to exchange tokens in a permissionless, decentralized manner. Launched in 2018, Uniswap operates on the Ethereum blockchain. It is the largest decentralized exchange in terms of volumes, active users and liquidity. High liquidity is crucial for a seamless trading experience. It reduces price slippage, improves order executions and enhance overall market stability. Uniswap has a very solid track record when it comes to security. Unlike many other DeFi platforms, it has never been hacked. So, what are the bullish catalysts for Uniswap this year? The Uniswap Foundation recently introduced a proposal according to which protocol fees will be distributed among those holders of the UNI token who participated in staking. Moreover, the fourth version of Uniswap is scheduled to be released in Q3 of this year. That could be an additional bullish catalyst for the price of UNI. Without delving too deeply into the technicalities of the upgrade, it is supposed to make the platform more efficient and less costly for liquidity providers. If you're bullish on decentralized exchanges, you should also keep an eye on curve and one inch. However, investors should be careful of the regulatory risks around Uniswap. Like other Dexes, Uniswap does not offer KYC procedures and regulators could theoretically target it, impacting the token's price. That means, if you decide to invest in Uniswap, make sure you keep up to date with the developments of global DeFi regulation. I would say that this one's very likely to retest its all-time highs, probably make new highs into end of year, assuming that, you know, the overall market stays strong. For Uniswap, that would be below four and a half, or sorry, not four and a half, but five and a half. Besides Layer 2s, a balanced altcoin portfolio should also include alternative Layer 1s. These are protocols that are directly competing with Ethereum. Perhaps the most prominent one is Solana, often dubbed the Ethereum Killer. Solana was the rising star of the last bull market. It went from a market cap of zero in March 2020 to about $55 billion in January 2022. But that impressive rise was followed by an equally dramatic collapse when the market went down. Its price reached record lows after the collapse of the crypto exchange FTX, which was the second largest holder of the token. Solana has been recovering spectacularly since then, rising by around 500% in the last year. It is currently the fifth cryptocurrency in terms of total value locked. However, Solana is still criticized for its excessive centralization. As you can see in the chart, a large number of salt tokens were distributed at its launch to VC investors. As you probably know, the more centralized the crypto token is, the higher the risks for regular investors. Moreover, Solana has experienced outages that paralyze the network from time to time, causing the token's price to tank. However, the impact of these outages on prices has been gradually going down. The latest one back in February went almost unnoticed. One could say Solana is not reliable as Ethereum, and that is true, but the price impact was minimal. So investors are saying, I don't really care for any of that. It's a combination of hype, right? We get all the speculation, all the meme coins, but I also think there really is a fundamental reason that people just find it easier to use. So it seems that from the market's perspective, Solana's downsides are compensated by its main value proposition, which is high transaction speed. 65,000 transactions per second. That is 4,000 times faster than Ethereum. More improvements are underway for Solana. This year, the Solana Foundation will launch FireDancer, an upgrade that aims at fixing the outage problem and making Solana even faster. I don't recall any other chain that did to any billion-dollar sub-transaction on a single day, apart from Solana. It could go up 50% over the next six months. I would expect that Solana will continue to rise. I wouldn't be surprised by a thousand-dollar Solana at the end of the cycle, for example. So here is a long-term prediction. According to a bullish report by Vanek, Solana could go up over 10,000% by 2030, due to its potential to capture some of the market share of Ethereum. If you believe in the narrative of alternative layer 1s, you should also have a look at Solana's comparators like Polkadot, Cardano, and Algorand. To conclude, excessive centralization and power outages should be reasons for caution when investing in Solana. At least at the moment, though, the market doesn't seem to care and believe in the bright future of the Ethereum killer. This is really representative of very volatile asset, I'll say, this skew here. But September, a 50% range high would be 700, or around 6... Sorry, make that like 650. The 61A level will be another 150 above that at just below 900. And above there, you got 1200 at the 786 level. Again, I think it's quite unlikely. Moving on until the end of the year, basically the last day of 2024, 50% range high would be just under 1900. What if present would negate this? So for Solana, pretty easily below $100. Below $100, something else is going on. You cannot trust these probabilities going forwards. And finally, one of the hottest narratives of early 2024 is at the intersection of AI and crypto. The main narrative is that crypto has an important role to play in the booming AI sector. Proponents of this narrative say that blockchain can make AI decentralized, preventing large tech giants from monopolizing this revolutionary technology. One of the pioneers and most prominent projects in the sector is SingularityNet. SingularityNet is a platform that aims at democratizing access to AI services. Developers can publish their AI services on the SingularityNet blockchain making them available to anyone who wants to use them. SingularityNet envisions a decentralized AI network. The platform's native token, AGIX, is used as a currency to pay for those services. SingularityNet recently entered a partnership with Cardano, one of the most prominent competitors of Ethereum. The team behind SingularityNet is perhaps its strongest point. Ben Goertzel, the co-founder of the project, is a true guru in the AI space. He is one of the main theorists behind AGI, or Artificial General Intelligence, a type of artificial intelligence that can perform any human task. The risk is that in the short term, the hype and buzz become larger than actual substance. Keep in mind that crypto AI is a very nascent sector and there are no real use cases that have found widespread adoption. 99% of the tokens that are launched claiming to be AI tokens are scams. So prefer something that has at least one year track record in trading. So if you believe in the AI crypto narrative, then SingularityNet is one of the projects you should keep an eye on. Other prominent AI crypto projects you may want to keep an eye on are DeGraph and Wordcoin. But be careful of short-term price volatility. Going into kind of end of April, beginning of May, you know, maybe send this move up to two, two and a half bucks. Assuming that the overall side continues just like Uniswap. This one has reversed the macro trend into an uptrend freshly with the last couple months. That would be below about 45 to 50 cents. That was it, guys. These were five picks that in our view could form the backbone of a strong altcoin portfolio for 2024. Don't forget the golden rule. Do your own research and diversify. Keep an eye on the main narratives. Then pinpoint the most solid projects within each sector. Once you've got your altcoins, make sure to spread your capital wisely among them. Hopefully now you have a better idea of how to build a strong altcoin portfolio and take the most out from the next altcoin season. If you enjoyed this video, consider leaving a like and subscribe to our channel. I'm Giovanni, your host. See you next time.