2023 코인베이스 암호화폐 시장 전망 요약 갈무리 (1)

2022. 12. 20. 2023년 암호화폐 시장 전망, 코인베이스 제공

2023 Crypto Market Outlook Summary

December 2022, Coinbase Institutional

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Contents

1. A note from the author

2. Key themes for 2023

3. Bitcoin

4. Ethereum

5. The L1/L2 Landscape

6. Stablecoins

7. NFTs

8. Regulation

9. Coinbase Institutional Update

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1. A note from the author(작성자 메모)

• The total market capitalization of cryptocurrencies is currently around US$835 billion, down 62% from $2.2 trillion at the end of 2021
• high relative to most of the asset class history(Nasdaq, Gold, S&P500, BTC-ETH, US Bonds… etc)

- 암호화폐 시장의 총 시가총액은 현재 약 8,350억 달러로, 2021년 말 2조 2,000억 달러에서 62% 감소함. 
- 암호화폐 시장이 대부분의 자산 시장의 흐름과 높은 상관관계를 유지(나스닥, 금, S&P500, 미국 채권 등)

2. Key themes for 2023(2023년 핵심 테마)

• The insolvencies and deleveraging events of 2022 have culminated in a confidence crunch that we believe could extend the downcycle for at least several more months(Luna, FTX)
• However, This environment has helped cryptocurrencies pull back from their speculative fervor and paves the way for new innovations in the asset class
• The high, positive correlation between cryptocurrencies like BTC and ETH versus US stocks garnered significant attention in 2022, but the coefficients have been trending lower since May. Moreover, digital assets exhibit a low correlation with other traditional finantial assets including commodities and bonds

- 2022년의 지급불능, 디레버리징 사건은 시장하락이 적어도 몇 달 이상 지속될 것이라는 신뢰를 완전히 박살냄.
  (몇 달이 문제가 아니게 만듦)
- 그러나, 이런 환경은 암호화폐 시장이 투기에서 벗어나 자산의 형태로써 새로운 혁신을 위한 토대가 됨.
- 2022년 BTC와 ETH는 미국 주식과 높은 상관관계를 유지했지만, 5월 이후로 낮아지는 경향을 보임.
- 디지털 자산은 상품이나 채권 같은 전통 자산과는 낮은 상관관계를 보임.

• Three key themes to prevail in 2023

1) A flight to quality among institutional investors

- Digital asset selection to favor higher-quality tokens

· digital asset selection will transition towards higher-quality names like bitcoin and ether based on factors like sustainable tokenomics, the maturity of respective ecosystems, and relative market liquidity

- Reinforcing the ETH narrative

· Ethereum’s successful Merge supports the fundamental narrative for Ethereum as a leader in a multichain world, particularly since nearly all networks are competing for the same pool of users and capital

· Layer-2 scailing solutions have their own set of risks. Centralized sequencers, a lack of fraud proofs, and a lack of cross L2 interoperability, to name a few

- Growth of a decentralized future

· The movement towards self-custody and decentralized finance(DeFi) protocols will likely accelerate after the developments in 4Q22

· 2022 were concentrated among CeFi(Centralized finance) or CeDeFi(a combination of both CeFi and Defi) entities such as Celsius, Three Arrows Capital, and FTX
· Mainly, the actions of these bad actors come down to issues of trust and transparency, which DeFi has historically handled well given its on-chain, auditable properties

· Of course, DeFi comes with its own risks like smart contract exploits, which could put more scrutiny on how different decentralized applications are managing their protocol risks. Also, rules-based margining embodied in smart contracts needs to account for the fact that the volatility of certain digital assets can be anywhere between 50-200%, while control of the token supply is not always clear, thus affecting their true liquidity

- More interest in permissioned DeFi

· We would expect to see greater demand for permissioned or enhanced DeFi that marries institutional-grade compliance standards with code-enforced transparancy. This could have compelling use cases for settlement and cross-border payments alongside innovations in the tokenization of real world assets.

- Tokenization vs tokens

· For some institutions, tokenization is a less risky way of having crypto exposure compared to investing directly in tokens
· banks are currently utilizing tokenized versions of financial instruments across several institutional DeFi use cases, often via public blockchains
· issuers are resolving the financial and legal hurdles. The market for these is still underdeveloped

2) Creative destruction that will eventually lead to new opportunities

- Lower liquidity spiral

· We think investors willingness to accumulate altcoins has been severely impacted bt the deleveraging in 2022 and may take many months to fully recuperate
· Overall, market depth has come down sharply across exchanges
· This could have important implications for developer retention and future application development

- Bitcoin miner’s capitulation

· Elevated network hashrate and resultant mining difficulty are further complicating matters for miners
· Challenging conditions combined with elevated energy prices, have resulted in a highly stressed economic environment for bitcoin miners for the past several quarters
· For that reason, we would expect the bitcoin mining industry to consolidate even further in 2023

- Exploring new use cases for NFTs

· we believe that the technological underpinnings of NFTs represent important archetypes for how ownership and identity should function in the digital economy
· The recent downtrends could be perceived as part of a healthy correction in the context of a broader trajectory of cyclical adoption
· Future participation could also be driven by new forms of utility outside of art/collectibles including digital identity, ticketing, memberships/subscriptions, tokenization of real-world assets, and supply chain logistics.
· Of course, the debate surrounding the enforcement of royalties at the token level may also pick up in 2023

 

3) Foundational reforms that usher in the next cycle

- More urgency for regulatory clarity

· the next market will be shaped in significant part by the development of standards and frameworks for regulated entities
· Policy makers should recognize that the problems faced this year were driven by human beings, not any unique aspect of crypto or blockchain technology

- Reform of crypto lending practices

· lenders to perform more rigorous due diligence and stress test potential exposures in preparation for less turbulent markets in the future
· The source of inventory in this space will move from a historically retail base to institutional investors

- A path for institutional adoption

· Despite widespread market volatility and lower trading volumes, we still witnessed broad institutional adoption of crypto in 2022 alongside the launch of many new partnerships
· A recent intitutional investors believe crypto is here to stay, regardless of the poor price action in the short term
· We still need to see a bottoming of the crypto markets, which may take time, it doesn’t help that traditional financial markets haven’t found their bottom yet

- 2023년 핵심 테마 3가지(① 기관투자자와 품질, ② 창조적 파괴와 새로운 기회, ③ 근본적인 개혁)
① 기관투자자와 품질
  · 지속가능성, 성숙도, 유동성 등 높은 품질을 가진 BTC or ETH의 선호도가 높아질 것
  · 성공적인 Merge 업데이트로 ETH는 여전히 멀티 체인 리더임. 레이어2는 여전히 리스크 존재
  · CeFi 때문에 2022년은 망했고, 앞으로 DeFi가 대세가 될 것임.
  · 토큰에 직접 투자하는 것보다 상품을 토큰화하는 게 리스크가 더 적음. 기관 및 은행 관심. 개발 더 해야 함.
② 창조적 파괴와 새로운 기회
  · 시장이 매우 가라앉아 있으며, 이는 개발자 유지와 향후 애플리케이션 개발에 중요한 영향을 미칠 것.
  · 높아진 해시레이트와 채굴 난이도가 비트코인 채굴자들에게 매우 복잡한 문제임(에너지 가격 등 경제 악조건)
  · 비트코인 채굴기업은 점점 통합될 것(사라질 것...)
③ 근본적인 개혁
  · 암호화폐 시장에 대한 입법기관의 명확한 규제와 가이드라인이 필요한 상황
  · 암호화폐 대출 관행에 대한 개혁 필요(Luna, FTX 사태 반성)
  · 암호화폐 시장이 하락세임에도 불구하고 많은 기관에서 관심을 보이고 있음

3. Bitcoin

• Bitcoin’s resilience amid major stress suggests its long-term success is not dependent on any centralized entity either pumping or dumping it
• CeFi lenders, hedge funds and venture capital funds became forced sellers of digital assets across the board
• From a macroeconomic perspective, the value proposition for bitcoin has only strengthened this year as sovereign currencies around the world have shown signs of stress and central banks continue to grapple with policy credibility
• The percentage of bitcoin holders currently underwater on their investments is nearing 50%. These represent major inflection points for BTC performance, preceding subsequent periods of price appreciation
• Wallet transfers are thus indistinguishable from BTC sales/purchases, potentially overcounting the number of underwater positions
• Today, Lightning Network channel capacity is near all time highs and preeminent industry leaders in finance and technology are participating in this space
• Further, there are a number of important Lightning enabled protocols being developed that have the potential to expand the utility of the Bitcoin network beyond a store of value

- 주요 스트레스(경제 시황, Luna&FTX 사태 등)에도 비트코인의 탄력성은 장기적인 성공에 중앙화된 것들의 펌핑과 덤핑에 의존하지 않음(한마디로 잘 버티고 있음)
- 주요 CeFi 대출 기관인 헷지펀드와 벤처캐피털 기업들이 디지털 자산을 강제로 팔게 됨(Luna&FTX 파산하면서...)
- 거시적으로, 비트코인의 가치제안만 강화됨(쉽게 가치가 올라가서 살만해졌다고 보면 됨)
- 투자에 손실을 보고 있는 비트코인 보유자의 비율이 거의 50%(상승장에 앞선 주요 변곡점임)
- 현재 라이트닝 네트워크의 사용량은 최고치로, 저명한 금융, 기술 인사들이 참여하고 있음
- 비트코인의 유용성을 가치 저장 이상으로 확장시킬 수 있는 여러 라이트닝 네트워크 지원 프로토콜들이 개발 중

• Miners as marginal sellers

1) Many miners had overextended their balance sheets throughout 2021, and when the market eventually turned, these leveraged players began to struggle, further perpetuating price declines as BTC reserves were liquidated
2) Some of the largest public bitcoin miners sold more bitcoin than they mined during 2022, depleting their reserves in the process
3) The 10 public bitcoin miners accounted for ~23% of total global hashrate at the end of November
4) In early December 2022, the bitcoin network experienced its largest downward difficulty adjustment since July 2021
5) Challenging conditions such as higher input costs(elevated energy prices) and lower output value have resulted in a highly stressed economic environment for bitcoin miners for the past several quarters
6) Signals of stress

- Compute North filing for bankruptcy in September
- Argo Blockchain warning in October it may need to cease operations if they’re unable to source new financing
- Core Scientific indicating they were potentially heading towards bankruptcy and halting all debt financing payments in October
- Iris Energy unplugging a meaningful portion of their mining fleet after defaulting on a loan against their hardware in November

7) economic conditions for miners worsened throughout 1H22, but hashrate curiosly kept climbing higher. Many operators had overextended their balance sheets throughout 2021 in order to build out mining capacity as fas as possible to take advantage of rising prices
8) Due in part to supply chain constraints, the delivery of incremental hardware was slower than expected. By the time their machines arrived, mining conditions had become tougher, and many of these operators were forced to either amend/extend their debt obligations or mine near brokeneven levels in hopes of a price rebound or competitors shutting down first
9) Many mining operators in the US arranged prepayment deals with power providers, meaning those operators would be willing to mine uneconomically for the duration of those prepaid energy contracts
10) hashrate will continue to decline and result in subsequent downward difficulty adjustments remains to be seen
11) potential sources of incremental hashrate may counteract the impact of distressed miners in the US shutting down

- Russia has been aggressively building out mining capacity to leverage stranded and cheap energy in the region
- mining in China has recovered, Many operators in the region may have access to cheap energy sources

- 비트코인 채굴자들이 2021년 그들의 수익을 조작하여 투자를 늘려, 시장에 레버리지가 쌓였고, 시장 상황이 반대가 되면서 그들의 준비금이 청산됨에 따라 가격하락이 지속되는 상황(채굴자들이 2022년에 채굴한 것보다 더 많은 양의 비트코인을 팔게 됨)
- 높은 인풋 대비 낮은 아웃풋으로 채굴자들이 힘든 상황(에너지 가격 상승, 채굴 난이도 상승, 경기 침체, 공급망 문제로 인한 채굴 부품 배송 지연 등)
- 심지어 에너지 공급자와 공급계약을 맺은 채굴자들은 경제적이지 않은 상황이지만 어쩔 수없이 채굴을 해야 하는 상황
- 그러나, 높은 해시레이트의 출처인 러시아와 중국의 채굴자들이 저렴한 에너지 가격으로 채굴을 하고 있기 때문에 시장은 잘 버티고 있음

• State of the Lightning Network

1) The growth and development of Bitcoin’s more scalable second layer infrastructure will be critical
2) The current public node capacity of the Lightning Network is at all time highs
3) In order to for bitcoin itself to gain merket share within the medium of exchange use case, it will likely need to grow into a larger, more mature, and less volatile asset
4) The growth trajectory of the network is encouraging and there is a robust ecosystem of developers and startups building on this L2

 

• Mt. Gox disbursements

1) One such event is the pending disbursement of bitcoin and other funds from the Mt. Gox rehabilitation plan
2) The rehabilitation Trustee approved a plan in 4Q21 to distribute 141,686 bitcoin to the creditors whose BTC was lost by the exchange. Market participants continue to speculate about the potential price impact of this large swath of bitcoin supply hitting the market in 2023

- First, Some hedge funds and private equity firms began acquiring claims from creditors at discounted prices starting in mid 2019, Those firms who purchased such claims may be more likely to hold these eventual repayments and/or hedge their exposure, as opposed to immediately selling their interest, given their historically constructive view of the industry
- Second, creditors who opted not to take an earlier payout and instead await resolution from the rehabilitation plan were relatively early to bitcoin. Those that continued to accumulate bitcoin
- Third, it’s difficult to say whether the potential supply of bitcoin hitting the market would be sold in pieces over the course of several months or all at once after all repayments are completed

- 비트코인의 확장성을 넓힐 수 있는 레이어 개발이 중요(L2)
- 라이트닝 네트워크 사용량은 최고치
- 비트코인이 자체가 교환매개로 활용되려면 더 크고, 성숙하고, 변동성이 적어야 함
- Layer 2 기반 개발자 및 기업 생태계 있음
- Mt. Gox는 거래소에서 BTC를 잃어버린 채권자들에게 141,686개의 BTC를 분배하는 계획을 승인함(21년 4분기)
- 이 행동이 시장에 어떤 영향을 미칠지는 미지수이며, 시장 참여자들은 23년 시장 충격에 예의주시하는 중
- 분배 예정된 채권자들이 이미 BTC를 헷지펀드나 사모펀드에 넘겼을 수도 있으며, 또는 그냥 가지고 있을 수도 있고, 또는 수개월에 걸쳐 팔 수도 있음(즉, 분배 예정된 채권자들이 팔지말지는 모름)

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4. Ethereum

• Ethereum’s Merge of its consensus ane execution layers in September 2022 represented a critical turning point for the network
• it increased the network’s energy efficiency and reduced the growth of ETH supply in the process
• Network traffic has also held up much better than other chains including Solana, Avalache and Fantom
• There is still a healthy distribution of overall rewards among validators at the moment keeping per capita earnings high. That staking ratio is low in part because stakers cannot withdraw their ETH until after the Shanghai Fork
• Once withdrawals are enabled, we would expect to see a sharp increase in ETH staked

- 이더리움 머지 업그레이드는 주요 터닝포인트임(네트워크 에너지 효율 증가, 프로세스에서 ETH 소요량 감소)
- 솔라나, 아발란체, 팬텀 등 다른 체인 보다 네트워크 트래픽 월등하며, validator들에 건강하게 보상 분배 중
- 상하이 하드포크 이전까지 인출을 할 수 없기 때문에 스테이킹 비율은 굉장히 낮음(23년 3월 예정)
- 상하이 하드포크로 인출이 가능해지면, 스테이킹 비율이 굉장히 올라갈 것으로 예상

• Future upgrades

1) The Shanghai Fork will represent the first major upgrade to the network following the Merge, which could happen as early as 1H2023 though no definitive date has been yet
2) One reason for the uncertainty in the timeline is that the complete list of Ethereum improvement Proposals that will be included has not yet been finalized
3) Two of the more hotly debated topics, Ethereum Virtual Maching Object Formatting(EOF) and proto-darksharding
4) Consequently, supply that has been locked on the market for several years will become liquid again
5) Eth’s future upgrade roadmap, Merge, Surge, Scourge, Verge, Purge, Splurge

 

• Censorship resistance(검열 저항)

1) On Ethereum and many other smart contract chains, searchers began to form exclusive deals with miners or validators for prioritization of their transactions ahead of competing searchers
2) This was a centralizing risk to Ethereum which was addressed by Flashbots, a research and development organization that aggregated most validators and researchers to a single open platform, removing the centralization risk from backroom deals.
3) The challenging is that block builders and relays are able to censor, which could slow down valid Ethereum transactions from being included on-chain(relay:중계, 중계소, 코인 스왑 중계 생각)
4) The Ethereum community is committed to ensuring the network remains decentralized and creditibly neutral

 

• New income streams with re-staking

1) The growth of validator middleware solutions could be a major theme in 2023 from an innovation perspective, with companies like Obol and EigenLayer at the forefront of these opportunities
2) While this could be a capital efficient solution for adding new middleware services to Ethereum and would not necessitate changes to the Ethereum blockchain itself, the additional slashing risk may temper adoption until EigenLayer is sufficiently bettle tested

- 이더리움 업데이트 로드맵(Merge, Surge, Scourge, Verge, Purge, Splurge)
- 이더리움 등 스마트 컨트랙트 체인 암호화폐의 중앙화 리스크 해소 필요(트랜잭션 검증을 위해 채굴자 또는 검증인들과 독점 거래를 형성하기 시작)
- 중앙화 리스크는 Flashbots에 의해 다뤄졌음(Flatshbots: 개방형 플랫폼으로 뒷거래를 통한 중앙화 리스크를 제거하기 위해 대부분의 검증인들과 탐색자들의 수를 헤아리는 연구개발조직
- 중앙화 리스크 해소를 위해 블록 생성자와 중계인들이 검열을 할 수 있지만, 체인 내에서 검열 기능이 구동될 경우 트랜잭션이 느려진다는 것이 문제
- 이더리움 커뮤니티는 탈중앙화하고 신뢰 가능한 중립 상태를 유지하고자 함
- 재투자를 통한 새로운 수익 창출이 가능한 검증인 미들웨어 솔루션의 성장이 2023년의 핵심 테마이며, Obol, EigenLayer 등이 있음
- 하지만 추가적인 리스크로 인해 충분히 테스트될 때까지 적용은 미뤄질 것임

5. The L1/L2 Landscape

• With the recent proliferation of alternative layer-1 blockchains and layer-2 scaling solutions, the marketplace for L1s and L2s has become significantly more saturated
• Ethereum’s almost 70% dominance in November 2022
• 2021 Top 10(ETH, BSC , Avalanche, Terra, Solana, Tron, Polygon, Fantom, Arbitrum, Cronos)
• 2022 Top 10(ETH, BSC, Tron, Polygon, Arbitrum, Avalanche, Optimism, Cronos, Fantom, Solana)
• Notably, the largest DeFi protocols on Tron and BNB Smart Chain are both forks of Ethereum-based protocols, Compound and Uniswap, respectively
• Something peculiar about the activity patterns on these L1s and L2s, however, is that their repective network traffic does not necessarily follow the cyclical up and down trends in the crypto markets, as one might expect
• This proves that there is healthy user demand for solutions that address issues of scalability, speed, and/or transaction fees, but what is less obvious is whether this will become a winner take all market
• From Fat Protocol to Fat Application

1) Value trends accrue to the protocol layer over the application layer

2) Over time, as user adoption grows and developers build more applications on these networks, mature protocols seem to be expressing the Fat Application thesis
3) The ardent competition among blockchains has pushed fees lower and lower to capture a greater share of network activity, while application users have often continued to pay for specific services, depending on factors like product/market fit
4) The investment thesis should thus focus on whether the growth rate of dapps on a given network is higher than the growth rate of the network itself and judge the investment opportunity accordingly

- 알트코인(Alteranative Coin) 즉, 비트코인 이외 레이어1, 레이어2 시장은 포화 상태임
- 이더리움은 전체 시장의 약 70%를 지배(암호화폐 시장의 전체 시가총액 중 70%가 이더리움)
- 2021년 상위 10개 암호화폐(ETH, BSC , Avalanche, Terra, Solana, Tron, Polygon, Fantom, Arbitrum, Cronos)
- 2022년 상위 10개 암호화폐(ETH, BSC, Tron, Polygon, Arbitrum, Avalanche, Optimism, Cronos, Fantom, Solana)
- Tron과 BNB 스마트 체인에서 가장 큰 DeFi 프로토콜은 각각 이더리움 기반의 Compound와 Uniswap에서 포크 됨
- 레이어1&2 시장에서 특이한 것은, 네트워크 트래픽이 반드시 암호화폐 시장의 상승-하락 추세를 따르지 않는 것
- 이는 확장성, 속도, 거래 수수료 문제를 해결하려는 솔루션 프로토콜에 건강한 수요층이 있다는 뜻
- 많은 프로토콜 중 승자가 누가 될지는 알 수 없음
- Fat Protocol(2016년 Joel Monegro의 이론, 쉽게 말해 프로토콜보다 애플리케이션이 더 중요한 Web2와 달리, Web3에서는 블록체인 기술 특성상 프로토콜이 애플리케이션보다 더 중요해진다는 뜻)
- 즉, 애플리케이션을 넘어 프로토콜 계층에 가치가 누적되는 추세가 될 것임
- 지금까지는 Fat Protocol이었고, 앞으로는 Fat Application에 집중하는 추세
- 유저 사용량이 늘어나고 개발자들이 더 많은 애플리케이션을 네트워크에 만들면서 성숙한 프로토콜들이 Fat Application 이론을 표현하고 있음
- 제품/시장 적합성과 같은 요인에 따라 어플리케이션 사용자들이 특정 서비스에 요금을 지불하는 동안, 블록체인상의 극심한 경쟁은 많은 네트워크 활동량을 차지하기 위해 수수료를 점점 낮췄음
- 따라서 앞으로의 투자는 디앱의 성장이 네트워크 자체의 성장보다 높은지 여부에 초점을 맞추고 판단해야 함
- Fat Protocol 참조

 

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