Coin Bureau Portfolio Updates Revealed!

As we stand on the threshold of what is likely to be the biggest year in crypto’s history so far, you may be wondering how Nic and Guy’s bags are packed as they gear up for a trip to the moon. Have they followed the herd and aped blindly into meme coins, or are they spraying and praying by picking up anything and everything in sight?

Spoiler alert, but it’s neither of the above, as you’ll no doubt be relieved to hear. But, their portfolios have been adjusted a lot over the last few months and, in today’s video, they reveal their top holdings and explain how and why they made their picks. Are they set to make mad gains over the next few months, or are they going to underperform? And, crucially, who is set to be the King of Coin Bureau in 2025?

You can watch that video here.

📈 Crypto Market Forecast 📈

This week could determine whether the crypto market explodes higher or continues correcting. That’s because it’s packed with crypto and macro catalysts that could take prices in either direction. The most pressing crypto catalyst is Trump formally naming his pick for CFTC chair. He is reportedly considering a16z’s policy head to take the post, which would be a big deal.

Besides the fact that a16z is the largest crypto VC firm, Trump is also mulling giving authority over most of the crypto industry to the CFTC. When you combine these two factors, it foreshadows a rally that’s even bigger than the one that was caused by Trump’s SEC pick on December 5th - the rally that took BTC above 100k.

Another crypto catalyst that could cause an upside surprise is the possibility that institutional investors will start allocating to Bitcoin, be they publicly-traded companies or otherwise. That’s because BlackRock recently put out a report recommending 1-2% exposure to Bitcoin to investors. That might not sound like a lot, but 1-2% of trillions in assets is billions of inflows.

It’s not just Bitcoin either. On-chain analytics from CryptoQuant suggest that institutional-size investors are accumulating ETH. It’s only a matter of time before a large publicly-traded company adds ETH to its balance sheet. All that’s missing is a strong narrative. The ‘Microsoft of blockchains’ narrative noted in last week’s newsletter might just do the trick (eventually).

On the macro front meanwhile, we have two significant catalysts, the first being the Fed’s meeting on Wednesday. Aside from the fact that Jerome and co will likely lower interest rates again, the central bank will also publish its latest Summary of Economic Projections (SEP). As the name suggests, the SEP gives an overview of what the Fed forecasts for the economy, inflation, and interest rates.

This is where things get interesting. In case you forgot, the Fed has been slowly shrinking its balance sheet in a process known as quantitative tightening or QT. This has been a headwind for the crypto market, and particularly for Ethereum. As our friend Ben Cowen has been pointing out, ETH has a history of outperforming BTC when QT ends.

So, if the Fed announces it will be stopping or reducing QT at its meeting, or even if it just notes that it will be stopping or reducing QT in the SEP, this could be rocket fuel for ETH. Much of this rocket fuel would go to altcoins too, because ETH is highly correlated to altcoins more broadly. And if the PCE inflation index comes in lower than expected on Friday, it will further increase the chances of looser monetary policy in the future.

As a cherry on top, we have the so-called ‘Santa Claus rally’ coming into play in the second half of this month. This is a seasonal phenomenon where assets see outsized gains. Officially, the Santa Claus rally occurs in the last week of December and extends into early January. Unofficially, many have argued that it has already started. If that’s the case, then let’s hope Santa and his reindeer have plenty of juice in the tank.

📆 2024 Predictions Unwrapped 📆

It’s almost the end of the year, which means it’s that time when everybody starts making predictions about what will come to pass for crypto in the year ahead.

This year is no exception and over the last week quite a few industry figures have published their musings about crypto in 2025. And, some of 2025 predictions are absolutely wild. However, we aren’t going to be talking about them this week.

Instead, we’re going to roll back the tape to see how many predictions made last year by Coin Bureau came to pass. At the risk of sounding like the worst sort of clickbait headline, the number of predictions that came true could surprise you. Besides, a review of last year’s predictions could give some clues for what to expect next year.

We made a total of ten predictions last year. We’re happy to report that we got six of them spot on, three half-right and just one wrong!

The ones we got completely right were; spot BTC ETFs being approved in 2024; BTC hitting new all-time highs; the Bitcoin halving having next to no effect on price in the short term; governments using BTC in international trade; more publicly-traded companies holding BTC on their balance sheets; and pro-crypto politicians being elected around the world.

To elaborate, we saw BTC start to hit new all-time highs in Q3 this year and, just last week, we broke above the landmark $100,000 level. As we mentioned in our video last year, the cycle top for BTC usually occurs a year after it sets a new all-time high. If the pattern repeats, we should see a cycle-top price for BTC sometime in late 2025.

This new bull cycle was spurred on by developments we outlined in other predictions we made last year. To be specific, the approval of spot Bitcoin ETFs which we saw in Q1 2024; the election of pro-crypto politicians around the world (especially in the US) in 2024; and the accumulation of BTC as a reserve asset by publicly-traded companies.

The most impactful of these was of course Trump’s victory in the US presidential election. His pro-crypto stance throughout the campaign has raised expectations of a more friendly regulatory environment for digital assets in the country. Not to mention that we also saw pro-crypto candidates being voted into power in countries like Argentina, Indonesia, and El Salvador.

As for BTC being adopted by publicly-traded companies, the most notable new entrants in 2024 include Metaplanet and Semler Scientific. We expect many more to join their ranks in 2025; in fact, many government bodies have recently been considering making BTC a reserve asset in their treasuries.

Now, the predictions we got half-right were: the first bull market narrative of 2024; Ethereum layer 2s seeing serious adoption in 2024; and the acceleration of stablecoins in payments.

Our prediction for the first bull market narrative of 2024 included three categories: decentralised social media, GameFi, and AI. Of the three, we were most bullish on decentralised social media being the leading narrative.

As we’ve seen over the past year, that wasn’t the case. Instead, the leading narratives have been meme coins and AI agents. While we completely faded the resurgence of meme coins, we did manage to get the part about AI being one of the dominant themes right. AI agents have begun to dominate the conversation in crypto, especially over the past few weeks.

The second prediction we got half-right was about Ethereum layer 2s seeing serious adoption in 2024. As we guessed, layer 2s did see increased adoption in 2024 after the Dencun upgrade, which made layer 2 transactions extremely cheap. As one report notes, over 87% of all transactions on Ethereum came from rollups.

Coinbase’s Base layer 2 was especially spectacular in terms of performance this year, leading over all other rollups in terms of activity, and second only to Arbitrum in terms of total value locked on chain. The part we got wrong in this prediction was Ethereum layer 2s stealing market share from alternative layer 1s like Solana. As we’ve seen over the past year, Solana made an impressive comeback with on-chain trading volumes being bolstered by the hype surrounding meme coins.

The third and final prediction we got half-right was the adoption of stablecoins in payments. Reports from Castle Island Ventures and a16z show that they amounted to $8.5 trillion in transaction volume across 1.1 billion transactions in the second quarter of 2024. In fact, stablecoin transaction volumes more than doubled Visa’s $3.9 trillion in transactions over the same period. We expect this to accelerate in 2025. The part we got wrong about this prediction was the rise in stablecoin payment volumes coming from non-USD stablecoins. As the Castle Island Ventures report shows, USD-pegged stablecoins accounted for 98.97% of all stablecoin volumes. Regardless, 2024 has been a good year for stablecoins.

The only prediction we got completely wrong was the one about FTX restarting in 2024. While this seemed to be a possibility in late 2023, the plan was shuttered after attorneys decided that the costs of doing so were too high. Instead, they chose to liquidate and repay creditors. You win some, you lose some.

Predictions aside, 2024 has been an innovative and transformative year for crypto. We saw the rise of inscriptions, BTCFi, synthetic stablecoins, crypto prediction markets, meme coin launchpads and of course AI agents to name just a few.

What will we see next year? Stay tuned for our 2025 crypto predictions to find out…

🔥 Hot Deal of The Week 🔥

Many people seem to think that we are on the verge of an epic altcoin season. If you agree with that assessment then chances are that your portfolio isn’t quite positioned as you would like to take full advantage.

To make those portfolio reallocations you’ll of course need a great exchange. Bybit is one of the most popular exchanges amongst the Coin Bureau Team and that’s because it gives access to a wide array of altcoins, offers deep liquidity and has a record beating matching engine.

On top of that we’ve been able to secure Coin Bureau users an exclusive deal that gives you up to $60k in rewards!

👉 Try out Bybit now!

🔮 Video Pipeline 🔮

* Our Ethereum Predictions: Exploring different scenarios and ETH’s potential!
* Banks And Crypto: How are banks integrating blockchain technology?
* Top 5 Exchanges 2025: Which exchange is best?
* Are Memecoins Dead: The rise, controversy and potential downfall…
* Japan And Crypto: Analysis into Japan’s crypto regulations and policies
 
🏆 What's New at CoinBureau.com This Week? 🏆

* ASIC Mining Explained
* Custodial or Non-Custodial: Choosing The Right Crypto Wallet For Your Needs
* Top Wallets to Secure Your Aptos Tokens in 2025
* Top 6 Crypto Debit Cards Compared Side-by-Side in 2025

📖 Quote of the Week 📖

There is no need to trade just for the sake of it. There is no need to jump blindly into the next hot narrative. There is no need to take action in the short term at the expense of your longer term thesis.

"Time is your friend, impulse is your enemy" - John Bogle

Team Coin Bureau

Disclosure: Authors may own cryptoassets named in this newsletter. These are unqualified opinions, and a Coin Bureau newsletter, is meant for informational purposes only. It is not meant to serve as investment advice. Please consult with your investment, tax, or legal advisor.