Only 3 days into 2024, some are probably still in the holiday spirit and are waiting for the 8th of this month before they get back to work. If you are one of these people I'd like to bring your mind to the ageless adage; "Time waits for no man" and it certainly hasn't decided to wait for you now, the major events slated for the first 3 months of this year strongly support this.

Positioning yourself means being knowledgeable of things to come, being in the right spaces with the right people and having the resources to act. If the resources aren't there, it's pointless to position yourself because you do not have the means to act on the information you gather from the people and spaces you find yourself in. To everyone who went hard during the holiday season, I hope you considered the future and saved a good portion of your cash in anticipation.

Before 2023 ran out smart individuals, like you and me, reflected on the year and drew out a map of what we generally want for ourselves in 2024, ranging from career choices to love and relationships. The vision born from our reflection must have been seen and written down as a plan. Without writing down the vision, it's just a dream you'd most likely forget. if you haven't reflected, now's the time for you to do so, do not procrastinate further. use the following questions to guide your reflection:

Deeply reflecting on these questions and other soul-searching topics will help you see reality and not the illusions you may live in.

Let's look at some of the big things to come this Q1.

1. SEC and The Bitcoin Spot ETFs

This is the most anticipated event of 2024 so far and it all began when the SEC lost their battle against Grayscale in October last year when the rejection of Grayscale's application to convert its GBTC to a spot Bitcoin ETF was challenged. When the court ruled against they SEC, it led to a sharp surge in the price of $BTC

Bitcoin Price Chart - From 13 October 2023, see how the rumours and final verdict caused a spike in Bitcoin's price.

After the court's ruling, the US SEC began working with entities who had filed for Bitcoin Spot ETFs, further raising optimism in the cryptocurrency markets, with Bitcoin closing New Year's Day above $45,000. There's been much speculation about when the SEC will begin the approvals for these ETFs, with the consensus being January 2024. If approved, its performance will be another big factor. Everyone is expecting an inflow of billions of institutional money into BTC. For BTC to continue pumping sustainably, this needs to happen.

So, the ETF will determine the fate of BTC, at least in the short to medium term.

2. The Resurgence of Alt Layer 1s

For now, the current bull market’s biggest winner is Solana. On October 1st, SOL was around $21. Right now, it is closer to $110. Their ecosystem activity has also boomed, leading to $SOL becoming the forerunner of the Alt-L1 charge. As the risk appetite of the market grows and becomes greedier, expect to see more money flow into these Alt-L1s, from large cap to medium then small, like a trickle-down effect. $AVAX, $FTM and $SEI are some of the tokens to monitor in Q1.

From TVL to active addresses and transactions, it seems that everything about $AVAX is turning to gold, with the upward motion they are all experiencing. This has been very positive on its price which has also seen considerable gains.

$FTM introduced a new upgrade called Fantom Sonic. It'll make Fantom more faster and cheaper. It is worth keeping an eye on.

$SEI started last year and is a relatively small blockchain, but they are also releasing new technical improvements such as optimistic parallelization and storage optimization. New ecosystems present the opportunity for airdrop hunting as well. When money starts rotating, these catalysts can easily turn into a narrative.

3. The Next Ethereum Upgrade

Ethereum's next upgrade, the Dencun upgrade, is tentatively scheduled for Jan 2024. It will be a catalyst that will bring attention to the Ethereum ecosystem.

The Dencun upgrade will implement "proto-dank sharding". This means that the cost of rollups to settle onto Ethereum will be reduced by more than 90%. This is a gigantic reduction.

This, in turn, will make L2s more competitive with Alt-L1s, such as Solana and Avalanche. And activity in the Ethereum ecosystem will likely rise. And this, of course, will benefit $ETH as well.

There is always a trickle-down effect. One leads to the other so watch out for EVM rollups like Arbitrum and Optimism as well.

4. Frax Finance

Frax has a lot going on this first quarter, from their partnership with FraxChain, and PayPal to Frax Bonds and BAMM.

FraxChain is particularly eye-catching because it is a general-purpose rollup like Optimism and Arbitrum but it will come with several innovations such as

1. Integration with its Liquid Staking Service: Frax can stake bridged ETH using sfrxETH. This will increase its yield comparatively to other competitors.

2. L3s on top of FraxChain: These might be called fraxtals and will have direct access to Frax’s financial services, such as stablecoin, LSTs, swapping, and lending. They may also be able to use DA externally to Ethereum.

3. Blockspace incentives: Users and developers will earn locked veFXS and/or factal points for using the chain. Since veFXS will be locked, some might earn more than they spend. So, we can expect much more activity across the chain.

The first quarter is always the most important one of the year because it sets a precedent for what's to come. There's so much going on that you cannot get it all on your own, you need the right community where the right topics and people can be found. Let's work harder to own this year.

happy New Year!