After a huge rally in the crypto market in 2023, it's perhaps no surprise that many investors are now expecting a similar type of performance in 2024. While past performance is certainly no guarantee of future performance, there is definitely room for optimism as we enter the New Year.
In terms of overall growth prospects and the potential to skyrocket higher in 2024, Bitcoin (BTC -2.17%) and Solana (SOL -5.08%) particularly stand out. Here's a closer look.
Bitcoin
It's almost impossible to talk about the 2023 crypto market rally without also mentioning Bitcoin. For the year, Bitcoin was up more than 150%. Bitcoin recently topped $45,000, and is now trading at its highest levels since April 2022.
Image source: Getty Images.
The key catalyst, of course, is the imminent launch of the first spot Bitcoin ETF for the U.S. market. There are now more than a dozen Wall Street firms that have submitted applications to the SEC, and regulatory approval of at least one of these is almost a certainty at this point. The new ETF potentially means new money flooding into Bitcoin, which should push up the price of Bitcoin over both the short term and long term. If big institutional investors decide to allocate just 1% of their multi-trillion-dollar portfolios to Bitcoin, the effect could be huge.
Even if you think that an efficient market has largely priced in the effect of this spot Bitcoin ETF, there's a second, even bigger, reason to buy Bitcoin hand over fist in January: The Bitcoin halving. This halving event, scheduled for April 2024, is largely expected to kick off a major rally in Bitcoin.
In three previous halving cycles (in 2012, 2016, and 2020), Bitcoin skyrocketed in value. In the 2020 halving cycle, for example, Bitcoin eventually soared to a new all-time high of $69,000. While another huge incoming rally is hardly a slam dunk, Bitcoin could soar past the $100,000 mark by the end of 2024.
Solana
In the final months of 2023, Solana gained tremendous momentum, and ended the year up nearly 1,000%. Thanks to this final year-end surge, Solana is now the fourth-largest cryptocurrency in the world.
The big question, of course, is whether this surge was driven by a huge speculative frenzy, or whether this rally was fueled by strong underlying fundamentals. After all, heading into 2023, Solana was pretty much left for dead. The crypto had lost more than 90% of its value, and the threat of "FTX contagion" made Solana toxic for many risk-averse investors.
But I'm firmly in the camp of investors who think that Solana has turned the corner over the past 12 months. Many key metrics used to evaluate a blockchain seemed to be trending in the right direction in 2023. By the end of the year, Solana was even showing signs of surpassing rival Ethereum (ETH -0.14%) in key areas such as non-fungible token (NFT) sales volume and decentralized exchange (DEX) trading volume.
And that's why I'm so bullish on Solana -- it has emerged as a serious competitor to Ethereum. As Cathie Wood of Ark Invest pointed out on CNBC, Solana is basically a faster, more cost-effective version of Ethereum. As such, it has a legitimate shot at becoming the preeminent Layer 1 blockchain platform in the world. As more users and developers migrate over to Solana, that will have a huge effect on Solana's ability to show growth in everything from NFTs to decentralized finance (DeFi).
If you take a look at Ethereum's market cap ($284 billion) and then compare it to Solana's market cap ($47 billion), it's possible to calculate just how much higher Solana might soar in the coming years. A $284 billion market cap for Solana would imply a price of nearly $600. But some analysts are predicting even higher valuations. Investment firm VanEck, for example, has suggested a price closer to $3,200 might be possible by the year 2030.
What to look for in 2024
While the outlook for Bitcoin and Solana might appear very bullish right now, just keep in mind that the crypto market is notoriously volatile. Moreover, regulatory risk is always a factor. If regulators decide that they are not going to approve a spot Bitcoin ETF, for example, that might prove disastrous for the price of Bitcoin.
That being said, both Bitcoin and Solana have tremendous long-term growth prospects, and both seem to be riding a wave of positive sentiment from investors. If you are looking to turbo-charge the performance of your portfolio in 2024, Bitcoin and Solana could be worth a closer look.
