Signum Capital Investment Director Ash shares investment insights: What potential narratives and projects should be focused on?

Signum Capital Investment Director Ash shares investment insights: What potential narratives and projects should be focused on?

Signum Capital Investment Director Ash shares investment insights: What potential narratives and projects should be focused on?

Signum Capital’s Investment Director, Ash L, shared his views on the current cryptocurrency market, upcoming ecosystem, and key areas that investors need to pay attention to. The following is a translation of the original text:

Recently, I took some time to organize my thoughts, as the market once again turned against us. Now, it’s time to get back to researching, writing, and planning our next steps.

This article will cover the following topics:

Focused Narratives
Emerging Ecosystems
Under-the-radar Potential Projects
Issues to Consider
How to Re-attract Retail Investors’ Interest

Table of Contents:
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Focused Narratives
a. AI x Cryptocurrencies
b. Meme Coins
c. SocialFi
d. PointsFi
f. Bitcoin

Emerging Ecosystems
• Due to the nascent nature of this industry, valuations are difficult to determine, and this bubble will continue to expand. Nevertheless, this is still the best way for retail investors to speculate and enjoy the upward trend of this new wave.
• It might come a bit early, but I believe some bets represent tremendous asymmetric upside potential, novel enough and flashy enough to attract the interest of most Degens/retail investors. (Projects like MyShell, Zero1 Labs, Chasm Network, Creator.Bid, and FirstBatch are some that I am looking forward to collaborating with.)
• Attention fatigue (re-staking/AA/interoperability/modularity) vs. simply buying memes, which is more accessible to the masses?
• Many people (traditional finance and older generations) criticize meme coins, but where is the difference? Meme coins, DeFi coins, and Bitcoin all have the same purpose: to make money.
• I believe this race has reached its peak now, especially with meme coin-themed conferences and funds starting to discuss meme coins. There won’t be any more astonishing surges like WIF or BOME at this stage. But at some point in the future, we may come back to these themes.
• For the average person, the best and easiest way is to escape the ordinary 9-to-5 life through high-risk speculation (I used to be one of those people).
• Friend tech looks promising, and several potential catalysts could bring about greater surges: more sophisticated designs, potential Coinbase listing, and building some DeFi infrastructure within the app.
• Fantasy.top and DistrictOne seem to be the popular applications this month, successfully capitalizing on the enthusiasm of us in the cryptocurrency community on CT(X) all day long. This sets a good start for the upcoming Blast token launch.
• For me, Telegram defines the fusion of social and financial, allowing users to participate in both spheres. Besides messaging and private Alpha groups, their wallet feature enables users to store stablecoins for interest and interact with on-chain dApps. Notcoin as a “Trojan horse” into the retail market is a good attempt.
• Points are a new concept introduced to gamify interactions between on-chain users and dApps. I expect this listing strategy and growth mechanism to persist as the project continues to develop.
• The concept of Points is great, just don’t deceive users by endlessly extracting value without fair rewards. Without these users, most dApps are just deserted towns. In this narrative, Michi Protocol is a good choice as it allows users to transact points before token issuance.
• Ordinals and Runes (yet to see any Rune tokens listed on Binance, only Runecoin successfully listed on OKX).
• BTC L2s: BOB, Bitlayer, Citrea.
• Interesting projects: Tap Protocol, Nubit, Bounce bit, Orangelayerxyz.
• Overlooked: RGB & RGB++ (Bitlight Labs) and Nervos Network.
• L1: Bera Chain (Infrared seems to be the birthplace of most flywheels), Monad, Shardeum, Tabi, Artela, and Particle Network tokens + chain launches.
• L2: Blast, Scroll, and Zksync token launches, XLayer may gain more attention on-chain (OKX <> XLayer similar to Coinbase <> Base // Binance <> BSC // Bybit <> Mantle).

Potential Projects That Can Attract Mainstream Market Attention
These projects represent the best ways for cryptocurrencies to enter the mainstream market and media. Headlines like “I played this game for 10 hours and earned $5000” or “How to make money by lying down with your device” are excellent ways to capture attention.
• Variants of “x-to-earn” (Sleepagotchi and Puffpaw)
• Games (Paralle, SIPHER, Overworld)
• DePin projects (Grass, OasisAI, NATIX Network)

Issues to Consider
• In an attention economy, every ecosystem and dApp is competing not only for Degens’ attention but also for the attention of retail investors, liquidity, centralized exchanges, and market makers. Look for projects with attractive meme coins and slogans.
• In the previous cycle, we had 3AC and Alameda (two billion-dollar funds) driving price increases. It is unknown which funds have the capability to make large-scale token purchases now.
• Consider the marginal buyers of the tokens you hold. Recently launched tokens were all dumped as soon as they hit circulation because people wanted to compensate for market losses.
• What is the contingency plan? What if the downturn trend of May 2019 repeats itself?
• Remaining catalysts: BTC ETF with an average daily inflow of about $145 million, ETH ETF (?), upcoming large-scale airdrops, US elections, and interest rate cuts.
• Be cautious with investments in angel rounds/KOL rounds. They can be divided into two categories: investments with 30-100x returns or investments with dividend splits (preferably 5-10x).

How to Re-attract Retail Investors’ Interest
This is not as simple as “focus on building and users will naturally come.” Remember what initially attracted you when you discovered the exponential growth of the internet?
• Rags-to-riches stories
• Communities (almost cult-like) that make people feel seen/show off
• Triggering one of the seven deadly sins
• Marketing budgets collaborating with content creators/celebrities (these types of advertisements are now rarely seen)
• Large-scale exponents that can draw in people (like Axie Infinity, BAYC, XRP)

(Disclosure: Signum and I may hold/invest in the projects mentioned above.)