2024 Crypto Recap: Your Next Steps as a Crypto Beginner

If you really have to ask, you should get out from under that rock. The crypto market is alive and thriving. With Donald Trump and Elon Musk leading the charge for integration in the US, BTC, ETH and others could establish new highs sooner rather than later.

It’s easy to feel like you’ve already missed out on major opportunities if you haven’t been participating, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be plenty more opportunities to capitalize on.

While it’s true that BTC was less than half the price at the start of last year, it’s just as true that these are the early days of a quickly growing market. With that in mind, there’s no time like the present to get your feet wet.

We’re not going to be shilling any projects here, or telling you that buying these coins will make you rich. We urge you to take a practical approach to investing in the crypto market if you haven’t already. At very least things are looking up for crypto, and just like the stock market, there are opportunities at varying levels of risk and reward.

To give you a head start, we’ll drop you some context on what’s been going on in the last year, and what to look out for in the coming months.

2024 was a very lucrative year for the crypto market, and in turn a profitable year for pretty much anyone with skin in the game.

In 2024, the global crypto market cap grew to an all time high of $3.7T, more than double the $1.65T we started the year with. In fact, the Bitcoin (BTC) market cap alone more than doubled last year, sitting at $2 trillion today.

With all this new money entering the market, most people holding bags from recent years have more than made back their initial investments. It’s never bad to take profit at all time highs, but a friendly reminder to use your crypto tax calculator when calculating those profits.

The previous crypto market cap high was established in the bull run of 2021 where it topped out at $2.9B before a crippling 2022 campaign. The global crypto market lost more than 70% of its value by winter of 2022, shrinking to a measly $800B.

Hindsight will show you that was just another buying opportunity, and HODLers were right to trust the process. As we close out 2024 at all time highs it’s easy to say that patience and perseverance paid off, but there still may be plenty to stay patient for.

One of the main reasons bitcoin is going up right now is simply because tons of money is entering the market, and in this market BTC is king. Bitcoin is considered to be the blue chip cornerstone of your portfolio, and it’s where most traders hold funds when they don’t want to experience the greater volatility of smaller coins.

In a nutshell, traders will convert their large cap coins into smaller coins on their respective networks, and upon completion of the trade move those funds back into BTC for the greatest day to day stability.

This is a great diagram to understand how money generally flows through the crypto market, and keep in mind as the market caps decrease, the volatility increases.

Long story short, bitcoin is going up because the world is recognizing it as arguably the best current store of value. While we may not be past the time when investors might opt to grow wealth in blue chip stocks or commodities like gold, the case becomes better and better every day that no store of value offers higher and more consistent yield than BTC.

The market sentiment is extremely bullish, and there’s plenty of news to support that sentiment. With Trump taking office we expect there to be much less friction in pushing forward crypto friendly legislation. That’s a green light for further institutional investment and societal adoption.

In fact, the US Treasury plans to invest $76B over the next 5 years into a strategic BTC reserve. It won’t really get more heavy handed than that; retail traders and experts agree that this could easily spark a rally sending the price of BTC to unprecedented highs.

El Salvador was the first country to adopt a strategic bitcoin reserve, and President Nayib Bukele took to X/Twitter recently to boast his country’s BTC gains. El Salvador has turned a $270 million investment into just over $630 million in about 3 years.

Whether you’re bullish or bearish on crypto, the important thing is you’re in the market. The fact that mainstream adoption and application of digital assets is happening cannot be argued, the biggest variables are how fast that adoption will happen, and what industries will it impact first.

Will we see a heavy retracement similar to the crypto crash in 2022, or is bitcoin a good investment even at its all time high? Which industry will see the most adoption, and which cryptos will explode in 2025?

Let’s preface this section by saying this – so many coins are touching all time highs right now that it makes sense to assume some pull back. With that in mind, you should DYOR on how you’d like to allocate your investment funds, but we will give you some insight on the market climate, and what crypto sectors to keep an eye on in the next year.

The bulls may want to skip this part, but asset Manager VanEck predicts a 30% retracement in BTC after peaking in 1Q 2025. Alt coins are predicted to bleed up to 60% after this peak. The CMC Crypto Fear and Greed Index fluctuating between “Greed” and “Extreme Greed” over the last month certainly supports this forecast.

For those that are unfamiliar, the Fear and Greed Index measures the overall sentiment in the market; extreme fear pointing toward an undervalued market, and extreme greed pointing toward an overvalued market.

It’s easy to see why bulls are staying bullish even at all time highs. Even if a BTC crash occurs in the short term, new adoption and legislation will likely push the crypto market to new highs… eventually. Let’s not forget that this is in fact the new tech on the block, and it will improve prior processes.

Asset tokenization is essentially turning a real world asset such as real estate, jewelry, artwork, etc., into digital tokens. Owning these tokens signifies ownership of a share of the tokenized asset. This tech has many advantages, among them fractionalization: the ability to turn an asset like a watch or piece of land into 10, 100, even 1,000 individual shares.

With tokenization, you don’t have to find a single buyer, you can break your asset into as many shares as necessary and provide much more accessible price points to buyers. Learn more about asset tokenization and how it works here.

With thousands of new projects launching every day, it can be hard to keep up. Rather than chasing the big new thing, we recommend keeping an eye on established projects that are leveraging new tech.

For a quick example, take a look at $FLOKI. They unveiled a new game called Valhalla recently. It was originally supposed to release late November but has been pushed back to 1Q 2025. From what users have seen, the game looks pretty well made. Equally as important, it seems that Floki is going the extra mile to develop relationships in the community.

It’s clear they’re taking the necessary steps to take their identity from memecoin to full fledged gaming/utility token. Nothing makes investors more bullish than seeing proactive leadership.

You may have also heard about the Pudgy Penguins NFT project’s new coin, $PENGU. The coin launched late last month, generating extreme hype from the founders’ promise to reward real-world toy owners with shares of $PENGU after the launch.

Let’s start by saying that trading memecoins is not for the faint of heart. We’ve discussed them at length in a previous article, and the best way to describe the memecoin market is the thriving casino of crypto.

Every day new meme coins launch and explode in value with little to no supporting information. We won’t get into this at length again here, but understand that this market operates mostly on sentiment and is THE most volatile sector in crypto.

If you’re interested in trying your hand, check out our Beginner’s Guide to Meme Coins.

There’s a lot to take in here, especially if you’re not previously acquainted with the crypto market. So if you haven’t been paying attention until now, you should get in the game, and DYOR on some of the sectors we mentioned above.

If you’ve been in the game a while then you might already be strapped in and just waiting for lift off. The way things are looking we’ll see you on the moon late 2025.

In any case, we’re far past the point of crypto hitting the mainstream. There’s no excuse for sitting out for this long, so consider this your sign to start learning about and investing in cryptocurrency.

Remember to stay smart, and be skeptical of anyone offering advice, especially if they want you to buy a coin. There are many bad actors operating in the space trying to cheat you out of your money, but if you stick to trusted sources and follow your gut, you can avoid the common scams.

That’s all for today. Expect to see more crypto-related content from us in 2025, alongside our regular resell-oriented blog. If making money is your new year’s resolution, welcome to your new favorite website.