November recap : narratives, best-performers, and coins to watch

$BTC from $68k to $99.7k after Trump election, $XRP and dinos outperform massively

Welcome to this monthly recap, I am Viktor and you can find me here on Twitter and here on Telegram. Enjoy your reading !

Trump wins the election and $BTC pumps to almost $100k

The main event of November has obviously been the US election and Trump victory.

The election night started with $BTC right below $70k, and it basically spent the whole election night drifting up. The price of BTC simply followed the Trump odds on Polymarket, and they just never stopped going up until it was very obvious that Trump would win the elections. $BTC pumped from $70K to a new ATH of $75K in a few hours.

It then sold off below $73k, then pumped again and stalled around $76k for a few days. On November 10 and 11, $BTC had two monster daily green candles that brought it from $76k to almost $90k. And then on November 13, $BTC reached a new ATH above $93k, consolidated for a week before trying to break $100k, but it topped at $99.7k. It then went as low as $91k in a few days, but closed the month above $96k.

That is a huge green monthly candle of +37%, which definitely kickstarted the bull run.

The $DOGE trade

The main Trump trade in the market has been $DOGE before the elections, it went up +30% in 10 days, and then again +30% on the election night alongside $BTC. It then cooled off for a day before ripping almost 2x in 2 days after the election, to around $0.42.

On November 13, Trump officially announced that Elon Musk and Vivek would lead the D.O.G.E. (Department of Government Efficiency). That announcement lead to an initial +10% reaction, but it did not really run after that. Actually $DOGE severely underperformed the market during the second half of November, as it basically consolidated while the market pumped.

There is an on-chain $D.O.G.E. coin too that has gone up tremendously in the last weeks, from $10M mcap post Trump victory to now $300M after a top at $500M.

One of the tokens that also benefitted from the $DOGE effect has been $BONK, which is another dog coin obviously, and listed on Coinbase, it had a +180% pump in 10 days to a new ATH before topping on November 20.

$PEPE and $WIF listed on Coinbase

All the major memecoins benefitted from the DOGE pump (as catch-up trades) but this got particularly intensified on November 13 with the $PEPE listing on Robinhood US. A few hours later, it is Coinbase that announced the listing of $PEPE too, which lead to a +50% pump in a day on $PEPE.

And then about 2 hours after, Coinbase also announced the listing of $WIF, and that pumped $WIF by +30% but it got rapidly retraced.

This listing almost marked the top of the large CEX memes, as they underperformed the market during the second half of November.

The memecoin trifecta and $PNUT

Besides the major memecoins (DOGE, PEPE, WIF, BONK), another category that has performed very well right after the Trump victory has been what I call the ‘memecoin trifecta’ : $NEIRO, $GOAT, and $MOODENG. These are 3 memecoins that have been listed in September/October on CEXes and that have gotten a lot of attention.

The momentum for the memecoin trifecta has been temporarily killed on November 11 when Binance surprisingly decided to list $ACT and $PNUT. At the time, $PNUT was worth $120M, and $ACT below $20M. In a few minutes, they were both at more than $400M mcap. The $ACT listing was particularly random, because $ACT was a very small AI memecoin that most people had forgotten since its top. This is so shady for Binance to do that… Even after its listing, $ACT pumped 2x to $900M mcap, and even flipped $GOAT for some time.

Peanut has been mentioned by Elon in a tweet a few days after its listing and it propelled $PNUT from $400M to $2.4bn market cap at the top, which is very very impressive. I would never have expected that coin to go this high.

Almost all of these memes severely underperformed the market during the second half of November. $GOAT topped at $1.3bn MC, $NEIRO topped at $1.15bn, $MOODENG at $700M.

SOL mid caps

Solana mid caps have been some of the best performers during a short period right after the Trump victory :

$SOL has been fairly strong until it hit a new ATH above $260 on November 22, but that also marked its top vs the altcoin market, since it has been completely underperforming since then.

Dino coins violently outperformed the market

The most impressive pump of the month has been the pump of dino coins, and especially the largest ones : $XRP, $ADA, $XLM, but also $HBAR, $ALGO.

I was extremely surprised that these have been leading the market and outperforming almost everything during the second half of November :

• $XRP : +450% from $30bn MC (around Trump victory) to $160bn MC at the top

• $ADA : +290% from $12bn to $46bn MC.

• $XLM : +600% from $3bn to $19bn.

• $HBAR : +700% from $2bn to $15bn.

• $ALGO : +470% from less than $1bn to almost $5bn.

These are absolutely massive pumps for coins that are already so large, which also means that they sucked up most of the liquidity in the market, and it was very hard for other coins to keep up, several of them barely moved or were even bleeding during the same period.

XRP, XLM, ADA, HBAR added almost $200bn to their aggregate market cap in a month

If we had to explain this performance, we could say that :

• $XRP and $ADA are retail-heavy coins, so it makes sense that retail coming back pump them

• These coins are listed on Robinhood, which is an important platform during the bull run since it’s retail-heavy too.

• They benefit a lot from the fact that Trump won. $ADA because it was deemed as a security by the current SEC and because Charles Hoskinson is telling everyone that he might be advising the Trump team on crypto. Ripple because they are in a long-lasting lawsuit against the current SEC, and Gary Gensler announced last week that he would resign in January.

• They are 2017 coins, and it looks like the coins from the 2017 cycle got more love than the ones from the 2021 cycle, maybe because their supply is extremely cornered ?

• Retail literally does not take profit, so these coins are completely PvE, whereas coins that are loved by crypto-natives are much more PvP in their nature, and crypto-natives will take profit much earlier without having crazy irrealistic targets ?

Short-lived rotations into different narratives

The rotation that happened at the end of the month in between two dino coins legs up were short-lived, but we’ve seen successively :

• 2021 alt L1s : $DOT (pumped 2x in a week), $AVAX (2x from its November bottom), $FTM (+60% in 5 days), $ALGO (+120%)

• 2021 metaverse coins : $SAND (+160% in 4 days), $MANA (2x), $GALA

• ETH beta coins : $LDO (+60% in 4 days), $ARB (2x from November bottom), $OP (+80% from Nov bottom), $ENS, $SSV.

• A few of the new VC coins : $TIA (+70% in 3 days), $SEI (2x from Nov bottom), $ENA, $MAVIA. $SUI is a special case because it was very strong until mid-November where it almost reached $4 (ie $40bn FDV) but has been underperforming during the second half of November.

DeSci for Decentralized Science

One of the new narratives that appeared in November was DeSci, Decentralized Science. Brian Armstrong, Vitalik, and CZ are all interested in that topic, and I think there was some kind of DeSci Day conference in Bangkok that both CZ and Vitalik attended, and this propelled the price of the main DeSci plays :

• $RSC : +273%. ResearchCoin is a project lead by Brian Armstrong, which makes it a very appealing coin to buy as a ‘no-brainer’.

• $VITA : 6x. VitaDAO is a DAO funding early stage longevity research.

• $GENOME : 7x. GenomesDAO is a platform for monetization of genomic data using DeFi and DeSci…

• $URO and $RIF are the two coins that you can find on ‘Pump dot Science’ and they pumped hard, from $1M mcap to $150M mcap for URO, and $1M → $240M for RIF.

The AI agents and memes mania

The AI agent craze did continue in November, with a lot of coins reaching market caps above $100M, both as AI agent/memes and as utility plays :

• $VIRTUAL : more than 5x in a month to almost $2bn FDV. It is the main tool used to create new AI agents.

• $AI16Z : $30M → $600M mcap.

• $ZEREBRO : $10M → $600M.

• $AIXBT : $40M → $300M. Main AI agent by Virtuals, acting like a crypto KoL on Twitter.

• $FARTCOIN : $20M → $400M.

• $BULLY : $100k → $240M.

• $VVAIFU : $2M → $200M.

Base season ?

• We’ve seen the revival of Base in November, with a lot of inflows to that L2, as well as the pumps of some of the leading coins there : $VIRTUAL (+430%), $AERO (+40%), $BRETT (+130%), $SKI ($3M → $360M mc in early December), $KEYCAT ($30M → $160M), $CLANKER ($2M → $140M), $MIGGLES ($20M → $180M), $AIXBT ($40M → $300M).

$THE listing on Binance :

• On November 26, Binance listed $THE, the token of Thena Finance, which is the equivalent of Aerodrome on the BNB chain, and it propelled the token from $20M mcap to $320M in two days.

The $HYPE token launch :

• HyperLiquid finally launched its $HYPE token, and it has been the largest airdrop in crypto history. It launched at $3bn FDV and reached $10bn FDV in a few days. Right now it has gone up again and is getting close to $14bn. If you consider that it is a perp DEX, it is overvalued, and if you consider that it is an alt L1, it is almost undervalued. It is by far the most loved project on CT, and its price action has been impressive.

On-chain runners :

• $CHILLGUY is a new ‘TikTok meme’, it basically went from $1M mcap to $500M without any drawdown in 4 days, but has been mostly stalling since then. Other impressive pumps on-chain in November include : $BAN to $350M mcap, $BARSIK to $350M, $LUCE to $320M, $FRED to $300M.

Best-performer list :

Best-performers among large caps in November :

• XLM : +470%

• ALGO : +289%

• XRP : +284%

• HBAR : +267%

• ADA : +217%

• THETA : +171%

• DOGE : +160%

• OM : +155%

• CRO : +157%

• DOT : +126%

• ENS : +140%

• PEPE : +121%

• BONK : +123%

• ENA : +132%

• VET : +117%

• SUI : +77%

Smaller coins worth noting that had a good performance in November :

• VIRTUAL : +430%

• RSC : +273%

• CTC : +177%

• IOTA : +146%

• DSYNC : +201%

• DRIFT : +209%

• NMT : +164%

• AIOZ : +135%

• CRV : +169%

• SAND : +175%

• XTZ : +166%

• EOS : +113%

And even smaller ones :

• PNUT : $3M → $100M → $2.4bn at the top

• ACT : $20M → $850M

• DOGE : $40M → $500M

• CHILLGUY : $1M → $650M

• THE : +1200%

• AI16Z : $30M → $600M

• ZEREBRO : $10M → $600M

• FARTCOIN : $20M → $400M

• AIXBT : $40M → $300M

• BULLY : $100k → $240M

• SHRUB : $3M → $250M

• VVAIFU : $2M → $200M

• ALU : +600%

Thank you for reading this article,
Cheers,
Viktor.