Here is what we believe the “Top 10 by MCap” list will look like by 2023.
Disclaimer: NOT FINANCIAL NOR INVESTMENT ADVICE. Only you are responsible for any capital-related decisions you make and only you are accountable for the results.
*This list does not take into consideration stablecoins such as USDT as they are not cryptocurrencies.
The Assets that will remain
There are three assets that will remain in the Top 10 by MCap list and will likely maintain the Top 3 as well, in our opinion:
- Bitcoin: The world is in the midst of a financial system change and Bitcoin is standing right in the middle of it. The trends of “hedging with Bitcoin” & “Bitcoin the reserve asset” will likely remain by 2023. What everyone believes is far-fetched but do not realise is already happening is Central Banks need to gain reasonable exposure to Bitcoin, we expect some to announce it in 2021. What happens when a Central Bank decides they want to own 1% of the Bitcoin supply? Bid 210,000 BTC, what does that do to price and MCap? If you think that is far-fetched: Bitcoin at $10,000 was seen as impossible in 2011. Think big. Bitcoin is a trillion dollar asset already.
- Ether: The native asset of the Ethereum blockchain, the blockchain that houses the vast majority of the new financial system (Decentralised Finance). By 2023, Ethereum 2.0 will either be fully delivered or close to delivery, in addition to EIP1559 being implemented which improves the economic model of ETH. In the next decade, we believe ETH will be the largest by market cap, however this list is for 2023.
- DOT: Native asset of Polkadot. Ethereum will not keep 100% DeFi market share forever, it will share it with the likes of Polkadot/Solana/Cosmos. DOT is the faster horse out of the upcoming options until now and that gives it the right to sit in third place. Ethereum will likely keep over 50% of the DeFi market share however.
The Assets that will rise into the Top 10
First, this is our opinion and you may not agree with it and that is totally fine. Second, the largest capitalisations always end up going to the largest/widest usage (of course with a good economic model).
Think stocks for a moment. The largest capitalisations belong to Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet (Google), Facebook. Do you see the pattern? These are all household names and companies whose products are used on a daily basis by billions of users.
Important Note: The stocks are valuable because stock holders earn dividend payments from the revenue of the companies. This sort of value trickles down to DeFi token holders, not 2017 ICO tokens.
The sector that is rising parabolically and acting as a liquidity blackhole is Decentralised Finance, naturally we do think all the other places will be taken by DeFi tokens.
- RUNE: THORChain will do to all of crypto what Uniswap did to ERC-20 tokens. For a full reasoning as to why we think so, click here.
- AAVE: Lending is a big and primordial part of any financial system, AAVE is at the forefront of this particular product and its growth in TVL and MCap are indicative of it.
- SNX: There will be a derivatives exchange where users from the around the world will come and trade a multitude of assets, including stocks and commodities. We believe that exchange to be Synthetix.
- SUSHI: Sushiswap began with a very rough start, but with community driven efforts it is innovating beyond Uniswap and slowly becoming more liquid. There will certainly be a DEX token in this list, the top two are UNI and SUSHI. While we like UNI, we believe SUSHI takes the prize here based on their advancements with the new products.
- SOL: While this could change based on development from other chains (Cosmos and the upcoming Mina), but Solana's UX is quite fast and unique, they're also always building with Ethereum bridges in mind.
You can see two more spaces left empty, the reason is we believe these will be taken by an asset management protocol and an insurance protocol, and as of now there is no clear winner.
- Asset management potential winners (for now) are YFI and APY, however the latter has not released their product and hence it is too early to judge.
- Insurance in DeFi does not have a good working product yet. The best current option is NXM (Nexus Mutual), however it has vulnerabilities and one of which owners of NXM are dealing with until this day: secondary market keeps trading at a discount - explained in this news article. In addition, the product market fit is not seamless by any means.
The two tokens we have the most conviction on, based on us being users and the tokens' economic models are:
RUNE & SNX. This is why these are the assets we have chosen to invest in.
In regards to assets falling out of the Top 10 List by 2023 that currently are in it, it would practically include:
- BNB: Honestly, this one we may be wrong on. While DeFi is taking over, Binance has very deep pockets and could turn things around for themselves and create use for BNB without going obsolete.
- ADA: Cardano, a chain that was created as an "Ethereum Killer" in 2015 and is only having a mainnet launch 6 years later should already tell you something. Why was ADA even trading for 6 years? Makes you think about the motivation behind its creation.
- XRP: While we still own some XRP (5% of our portfolio), the future doesn't look as bright. XRP was mainly a retail play and its potential has dropped significantly post-delistings. Nonetheless we still root for its success, we're just being realistic.
- LTC: Litecoin will see its cycles of new retail buying it because "Bitcoin is too expensive", however it does not serve as much use nor has as good of an economic model as most DeFi tokens and hence by the laws of natural selection will fall out of the top 10.
- LINK: A very important part of DeFi, will likely remain in the Top 20 too. Other assets have better economic model for their tokens though.
- BCH: Bitcoin Trash
- XLM: A copy of XRP, copies don't survive without excess innovation and Stellar does not have that.