Diamond Hand Final Chapter: Bet on Bull Run Beta, Four Major Altcoin Targets

Author: Lao Bai

It's been two years since I wrote the Diamond Hands series, and today I'm coming out with a third edition, which is likely to be the last edition of the Diamond Hands series. Because in this cycle of the crypto world, apart from rewarding BTC Diamond Hands, other profits have basically been ruthlessly washed away. The previous Diamond Hands series also leaned towards finding Alpha, while this edition leans towards Beta, after all, some Alpha investors from before have been completely wiped out, which is indeed a past that is hard to look back on.

The biggest Beta is of course the dominant three: BTC + ETH, SOL, BNB. As for the altcoin Beta, personally, I am currently optimistic about the following four and plan to dig deeper.

1. AAVE - AAVE can be considered one of the few assets you can hold long-term and sleep well at night apart from the top three strong players. The TVL has already broken previous highs and reached over 30 billion, and what's even more commendable is that there hasn't been a significant security incident in all these years. You see traditional financial institutions like JP Morgan testing the waters of blockchain, and they also prioritize testing things on AAVE.

This wave of RWA+ stablecoins, combining blockchain with traditional finance, is destined to be the primary direction for future blockchain development, enhancing efficiency quickly, well, and economically. The projects that can get on board, apart from public chains, have less certainty for Uniswap/Curve, while AAVE is definitely a leading project that will certainly be on board. The upcoming launch of V4 in the next few months is also highly anticipated, so it is worth a deep dive.

2. Pendle - TVL has reached 6 billion, close to its previous high, stable as can be, and is about to迎来third wave

Pendle's first wave relies on Sushiswap and some DeFi protocols to split out yields from liquidity mining, but it hasn't generated much buzz or excitement, as those yields are indeed quite illusory.

The second wave is the previous wave based on Lido and Eigenlayer's LST/LRT, soaring high. After all, the returns have indeed dropped significantly.

The future third wave will be a surge of RWA and stablecoins. In traditional finance, yield tranching and risk separation are extremely important sectors, with a massive market (over $10 trillion). As more RWA and stablecoin assets come onto the chain, this sector will undoubtedly rise with the tide. Unlike AAVE, which still faces competition from Compound, Morpho, etc., Pendle is essentially a dominant player in this sector, where you can't even see competitors with a telescope.

The only downside is that the coin price is too stable, with not much fluctuation. Let's observe for a few months first.

3. Hyperliquid - The strongest token issuance project in this cycle, no exceptions

The user experience of Perp on other chains is crushing, coupled with crushing trading depth, leading to a crushing lead in trading volume and a crushing lead in market capitalization.

Moreover, Hyperliquid is not positioned as a Perp; it is an on-chain Liquidity Layer. The recent integration with Phantom is the best proof of this, and in the future, there will be more front ends connecting to Hyperliquid as this liquidity backend.

In addition to the current massive buybacks every day, there is also the creation of the HyperEVM ecosystem, and various follow-ups such as HIP-3's RWA Perp are gaining momentum.

But Hyper is the only diamond hand I haven't built a position in yet, because I sold off the airdrops 4-10. Watching the current market cap close to 50 billion makes me feel a bit resentful + I can't bring myself to buy. I hope to find a good entry point in the future; I definitely want to invest, and if not, I can always wait for the next bear market to invest...

4. Bittensor - I used to be biased against Bittensor, but only recently did I realize that I want to start supporting it, planning to delve into it for 6-12 months

The reason for the black is naturally his PMF. I've been questioning it since 2023, and I still doubt it now. I always feel that Bittensor is very similar to Filecoin.

Filecoin fills up with garbage data without real commercial demand, Bittensor creates its own demand without real commercial needs, and miners roll out reasoning results that are of no real use. Last year, many miners colluded with validators to take advantage of emissions like Rumor and various dramas...

So no matter how you look at it, this thing seems like Filecoin.

So why have you figured it out recently?

First, Crypto has disproved a bunch of tracks during this development cycle, confirming two tracks.

The confirmed tracks are one in finance (Defi, RWA, stablecoins all count) and one in Gamble (meme, PolyMarket, and various forms of on-chain casinos all count).

Among the few that are still self-evident, Crypto+AI is definitely the biggest player, and even if it cannot be proven in the short term, it is also very difficult to completely disprove in this field.

Among all the current AI+Crypto projects, the hardest to disprove is Bittensor.

There are several reasons.

1. It ranks first in market value, and in this sector, Mindshare is also number one. When you think of Crypto+AI, it is definitely the first one that comes to mind.
2. At the current stage, very few people can clearly explain what Bittensor is really about. Try it yourself and see if you can explain Bittensor to a friend in 10 minutes.
3. The current number of subnets has nearly reached 100, and next year it shouldn't be a problem to have two to three hundred. Some subnets have really achieved PMF+ and generated income - (although most of the clients are also Web3 projects, and that income is negligible compared to Bittensor's market value)......
4. In January and February next year, Bittensor will have a halving. This thing has a hard cap of 21 million like BTC, and it halves approximately every 4 years. The halving next year is definitely going to be a significant event.

In terms of emission mechanisms and Mindshare, this thing can be seen as the BTC of the AIxCrypto track. As for subnet design, consensus, and proof mechanisms, it resembles ETH - if a star subnet emerges with something that truly has PMF, it would be like Uniswap and AAVE emerging on ETH. After all, its subnet coverage ranges from decentralized training, to data, to computing power, to inference, text, images, videos, drug research, blah blah blah, it has everything; basically, all the subfields of AI+Crypto you can think of have one or several subnets working on things. Therefore, compared to other projects, Bittensor feels more like a foundational platform like ETH, especially since subnets can issue their own tokens this year.

But the biggest problem with Bittensor is also its high market value, with daily emissions exceeding one million U. At this stage, digesting it is still quite challenging. If you think it's expensive, you can focus on it in the first half of next year; currently, it's up to you whether to dive in or not.

OK, the Diamond Hand series is officially concluded. Let's see if this final version of Diamond Hand can outperform BTC in the next couple of years, so I'm recording today's prices - BTC-118275, AAVE - 312.7, Pendle - 4.43, Hyper - 44, TAO- 433.