HTX Ventures Identifies Five Rapidly-Growing Sectors in 2024, Expects Positive Crypto Regulations Driven by Trump Next Year

SINGAPORE, Dec. 17, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — As Bitcoin surpassed the $100,000 mark on December 5, 2024, this landmark year for the crypto industry is closing on a high note. It has also been a fruitful year for HTX Ventures, the global investment division of HTX, which supported a total of 28 leading crypto projects and funds, continually exploring new frontiers of crypto utility. Recently, HTX Ventures released its 2024 Year In Review, highlighting this year’s key developments in the crypto industry and forecasting market trends for the upcoming year.

Within this report, HTX Ventures highlighted five key sectors that showed encouraging progress in 2024 – the Bitcoin Ecosystem, Infrastructure, Meme Coins, AI, and the TON Ecosystem – and will continue to closely monitor these areas in 2025.

Bitcoin Ecosystem

With Bitcoin dominance reaching 56.81% and Bitcoin spot ETFs now accounting for 5.3% of the total Bitcoin supply, a new market trend has emerged. Bitcoin has solidified its position as the core asset, with spot ETFs acting as liquidity channels, and U.S. listed companies such as MicroStrategy (MSTR) serving as the vehicles to absorb unlimited dollar liquidity.

As a result, it is increasingly essential to further develop Bitcoin’s ecosystem and enhance capital utilization efficiency. It has driven infrastructure projects, including Layer 2s, execution layers, interoperability solutions and security layers, to continuously emerge.

With strong support from macro markets and infrastructure support, HTX Ventures anticipates a further surge in Bitcoin demand over the next two years.

Infrastructure

Infrastructure remained a cornerstone in this year’s crypto investments and funding. The synergy between capital and technology has driven the rapid development of Layer 1, Layer 2,  and middleware projects, among others.

Through ongoing upgrades and construction, the Ethereum ecosystem has improved Layer 2s’ performance and reduced network fees. Other Layer 1s, such as Solana and TRON, achieved active on-chain transactions, attributable to the development of meme coins, and infrastructure like Pump.fun and Sunpump. Layer 0 and cross-chain middleware have made breakthroughs in interoperability, expanding the multi-chain landscape. Modular public blockchains, like Celestia and Monad, offered exceptional performance and flexibility, thus attracting diverse applications. Restaking projects, which aim to enhance network security and capital efficiency, has seen speedy development and gained market attention. Bitcoin Layer 2 has emerged as a new focus in the primary market for its attempt to combine Bitcoin’s security with high-performance scaling solutions.

As HTX Ventures stated, infrastructure is still imperative in this year’s crypto investments and funding. Layer 1 solutions, in particular, now represent the focal point of technical development and exploration within the crypto space, and it is expected to remain a priority for development resources and capital investment in the future.

Meme Coins

The Meme coin sector emerged as a hotspot in the crypto market in 2024, fostering community consensus while integrating with fields like DeFi and GameFi to create new use cases. For example, Solana has actively championed the innovation and growth of meme projects, successfully energizing its ecosystem. As the crypto market environment grows increasingly favorable, more retail investors are expected to enter the market, positioning Meme projects as vital channels for capital inflows.

The Meme coin fair launch sector has gained significant market attention and attracted substantial participants this year. Infrastructure projects such as Pump.fun and SunPump have emerged as top-performing cash flow generators, injecting fresh momentum into Meme coin development. As multi-chain ecosystems mature and real-world use cases expand, Meme coin infrastructure will continue injecting more vitality into this sector.

AI

In 2024, the intersection of Crypto and AI sector has been driving the exploration of several segmented fields such as ZK/OPML for enabling AI on-chain, AI data crowdsourcing, decentralized computing power rental, AI data trading, AI games, and AI agents.

One of the hottest segmented fields is AI agents, which are put on chains to take advantage of the token mechanism to incentivise and bootstrap certain behaviors with the agents, including interacting with smart contracts, trading and querying on behalf of users. In the future, AI agents will gradually become personal butlers and assistants for users, serving them with comprehensive capabilities, such as independent asset issuance, initiation of viral marketing campaigns, formation of DAOs, and even fund management and investment decision-making. Over time, they may develop unique cultures and religions. This deep integration of AI and encryption technology is a groundbreaking evolution that is unattainable within Web2 and cannot be achieved by Web3 relying solely on encryption technology.

TON Ecosystem

Attributable to Telegram’s hundreds of millions of users and robust technical support, the TON (The Open Network) ecosystem has progressively developed into a multi-layered blockchain ecosystem. In 2024, it experienced a full-scale boom in its ecosystem and market presence. From DeFi and meme coins to NFTs and gaming, TON leveraged its massive user base to achieve significant milestones in various fields, pioneering the monetization of Web2 social applications through crypto.

One standout success was the adoption of “tap-to-earn” games with token airdrop incentives, which effectively onboarded a large number of Web2 users. However, as the TON ecosystem moves into 2025, it must explore and find new business models to improve user retention and identify its next growth curve.

2025 Outlook

Donald Trump’s expected repeal of SAB 121 after his inauguration on January 20, 2025, would allow traditional financial institutions to hold crypto assets on their balance sheets, further accelerating the institutionalization of crypto assets. The repeal will not only open up more financing options for crypto but also make spot cryptos more accessible through existing institutional exchanges and partnerships.

At the same time, this regulatory easing is poised to enhance the overall maturity of the institutional crypto market. With the entry of traditional financial institutions, Bitcoin is anticipated to gain stronger support and gradually establish itself as a core dollar-denominated asset, alongside others tied to the dollar industry cycles, such as AI.

HTX Ventures points out that the market is still far from its bull market peak. Against the backdrop of Trump’s fiscal expansion policies and unprecedented crypto-friendly signals, a robust bull market is expected.

To learn more, please visit: https://square.htx.com/htx-ventures-2024-year-in-review/

About HTX Ventures

HTX Ventures, the global investment division of HTX, integrates investment, incubation, and research to identify the best and brightest teams worldwide. With more than a decade-long history as an industry pioneer, HTX Ventures excels at identifying cutting-edge technologies and emerging business models within the sector. To foster growth within the blockchain ecosystem, we provide comprehensive support to projects, including financing, resources, and strategic advice.

HTX Ventures currently backs over 300 projects spanning multiple blockchain sectors, with select high-quality initiatives already trading on the HTX exchange. Furthermore, as one of the most active Fund of Funds (“FOF”) investors, HTX Ventures invests in 30 top global funds and collaborates with leading blockchain funds such as Polychain, Dragonfly, Bankless, Gitcoin, Figment, Nomad, Animoca, and Hack VC to jointly build a blockchain ecosystem. Visit us here.
Feel free to contact us for investment and collaboration at VC@htx-inc.com

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Ruder Finn Asia
htx@ruderfinn.com