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

Higher high on $BTC, vibe shift, VC coin strength, $SUI and $TAO lead

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

Main events that happened in September :

• Maybe the main event of this month was the highly anticipated FOMC meeting on September 18. There was a lot of uncertainty between 25bps or 50bps rate cut, but the market was 100% expecting a rate cut. We got a 50bps rate cut, and the crypto market reacted well to the news overall since $BTC pumped by +10% in a week after that announcement (even if the reaction in the very short term after news was completely chaotic). I interpret this rate cut as bullish too, since it means global liquidity will go up, and $BTC is very correlated to global liquidity, so it is very likely to go up too ? At least that’s what I’m betting on.

• Aleo is a new ‘zk Alt L1’ that has launched its $ALEO token on September 18, and despite the fact that it trades on Coinbase and that its FDV was $5bn at launch, almost nobody has been talking about it on CT. I quickly realized that the float was extremely low, which meant that we were dealing with WLD-like tokenomics, which is why I have been expecting it to pump and have a short squeeze, which is what happened, with a +160% move from its bottom, before selling off.

• Two new Ton app coins have been listed recently : $HMSTR (Hamster Kombat) and $CATI (Catizen). Both of them have been trading poorly since launch, and bleeding from $1bn FDV to $500M. Both are still overvalued, but they will probably have a very strong scam pump at some point.

• MicroStrategy has announced twice in September that they bought $BTC, and in both cases, this did not mark a local top. First announcement was on September 13, they said that they had accumulated around $1.1bn worth of $BTC over a month. On September 20, Saylor announced that they bought $400M more $BTC in a week. They should still have around $500M of dry powder for buying, since it was said a few months ago that they raised $2bn for that.

• The Neiro saga has continued in September, with NEIROETH being listed on Binance perps on September 6, which lead to a +85% pump in a hour from $100M mcap, after having bottomed a few days before at $25M market cap. On September 16, Binance announced the listing of NEIROCTO on Binance spot… this caused a -40% crash on NEIROETH and a gigantic pump of NEIROCTO from $15M MC to $150M, and then almost $550M later in the month. Truly incredible story and incredibly PvP meta, but at least we know that there is a very strong Binance cabale behind NEIROCTO, so be careful with shorts on that one.

• On September 23, Celestia announced that they raised $100M from VCs. It lead to a +25% pump in a few hours, which I considered to be quite stupid since this ‘raise’ is just an OTC token sale at discount, ie future selling pressure coming from people that bought at low prices. The entire pump has then been retraced in a week.

• On September 26, Ethena announced the launch of a new stablecoin that is a wrapped version of the BlackRock BUILD fund/stablecoin. It caused a +15% in a few hours. They later also announced the launch of a spot/perp DEX called Ethereal and that will use USDE as collateral.

Main narratives of September :

BTC higher low before higher high :

For the 3rd time in a row, the month opened with a dump, as $BTC went from $58k to as low as $52.5k. This marked a new local low on the chart, but the remaining of the month has been pretty much up only, with $BTC printing a higher high at $66k near the end of the month, as well as altcoins showing the first signs of strength in a long time.

What is interesting to notice is that the altcoins that initially had the most strength from the bottom were mostly VC coins and ‘fundamental coins’ compared to memecoins, which also signals a shift from the very memecoin-skewed market we’ve had since March 2024. Some ‘legit coins’ went low enough to become interesting as longs, after some -70% to -90% nasty drawdowns from their top.

VC coins x Alt L1s : $SUI leads

The main narrative of the month was the VC coins outperformance, and the strong pump of very specific ones. The best combo has been VC coin x L1, with $SUI (+123% monthly gains), $SAGA (+114%) and $SEI (+63%) among the best performers. Another coin that has been leading the market has been $TAO, the leader of the decentralized AI narrative with a 2x in a month.

Some other VC coins were great catch-up trades to the leaders, such as $ENA (+54%) and $W (+38%), which pumped later in the month but still had great returns.

$SUI is by far the coin that got the most mindshare increase in September, it was consistently the strongest coin during the whole month, and went from $8bn FDV to $18bn FDV at the end. During a very long time, $SUI has been trading on par with other ‘s-tier coins’ such as $APT, $ARB, $OP, $STRK, and $TIA, but now it 2x to 4x larger than some of these. So either this was a short-term narrative and it will mean revert back to their valuations, or $SUI has become the new SOL, and we’ll have a new SOL trade with it. In that case, the optimistic target for $SUI is 100bn FDV.

Naturally, a few SUI ecosystem coins had huge returns too, for example $CETUS (3x, leading Sui DEX), $SCA (+150%, leading Sui money market), or memecoins such as $BLUB ($4M → $50M mcap) and $FUD ($8M → $30M).

Another L1 that is not new but has performed well is $FTM (+64%), which benefits from the future Sonic launch and rebrand/migration catalyst that should happen in December 2024.

$TAO strong pump and AI narrative follows

As I said in the previous section, $TAO has also been one of the main pumps in September, as it 2x’d and reached $4.5bn market cap ($12bn FDV).

I have written a few times that TAO was a cult and that you don’t want to fade cults in crypto, but I have also always been wary about the large FDV it has.

Anyway, TAO seems to have become the #1 bet for crypto x AI, and this sector does not have any ceiling, so if you had to imagine a top target for $TAO, it would be $100bn FDV.

The $TAO pump also ignited an AI bid across the board : $NEAR (main alt L1 x AI), $AR, $ARKM, $PHB (AI x China), $FET, $RNDR, $AGI, $WLD, $MASA (new AI small cap).

No significant winner besides $TAO, so choose your fighter.

Sol mid-caps outperformance

$SOL did not perform particularly well in September, and in fact it even underperformed the altcoin market (that’s the first time it happens since mid 2023). But what is noticeable is that many of the Solana ecosystem mid caps have been outperforming massively (whereas large caps such as JUP, JTO and PYTH were less noticeable). Here are the monthly performance for some of them :

• $CLOUD : +58%

• $DRIFT : +40%

• $PRCL : +81%

• $ZEUS : +65%

• $KMNO : +61%

Most of these coins have been launched in bad conditions whereas the largest ones (JTO, PYTH, JUP) were launched in good conditions… mean reversion now ?

Memecoins catch-up

The largest CEX memecoins have been lagging hard vs VC coins up until September 26, but they basically had +25% pumps in a few days after that date. In the end, $PEPE (+38%), and $WIF (+62%) are among some of the best performing coins of the month in the top 100.

$POPCAT has been the strongest ‘large cap’ memecoin in September (+68%), and it spent the last days of the month stalling around its ATH at $1bn mcap. The other main cat coin $MOG also had good gains with +60% monthly returns. I like $CAT (Simon’s Cat) as a long too, as I think it has not topped, and is overall strong (+50% gains in September).

A significant mover during the second half of September has also been $MOTHER, the coin of Iggy Azaela, which is up 3x in September and went close to $150M market cap. I don’t like this coin too much, but many people are bullish on it, I would not be surprised to see it reach its ATH and beyond. $DADDY which is Andrew Tate coin is also up +80% in a month.

On-chain mooners : $MOODENG on Sol and $SPX on Eth

The leading on-chain memecoin of September in the Solana ecosystem has been $MOODENG, which is based on the now world-famous pygmy hippo called Moo Deng. The chart of the memecoin is really incredible, it has basically been pumping in a straight line from $300K to $320M market cap, before stalling in the $200M-$300M region. Some people are expecting it to go to $1bn mcap, personally I don’t find the r/r too attractive right now since the normie mindshare for this meme is at ATH (or we’re even past that), but I can be totally wrong.

Murad recently shilled $SPX, which is an ‘old’ Ethereum memecoin from the ‘on-chain summer’ 2023 era that has never been able to go higher than $30M mcap but never died either. This time it pumped extremely strongly from $15M to $150M at the end of the month, and now more than $200M mcap, it is absolutely unstoppable.

$JOE is in the same category and started pumping too, it is up from a $4M mcap low early in the month to now $30M. Basically all the Eth memecoins from the mid-late 2023 era are pumping now : $BITCOIN, $KEKEC, $SMURFCAT. Remember that $MOG was also in that category, but it’s the first one that completely broke out and reached $200M+ mcap. $SPX is basically having the same kind of move as $MOG when it went from $20M to $450M almost in a straight line.

A few additional comments about some coins and narratives :

• Overall, the gaming sector has been lagging hard, which means that some new VC coins down a lot from ATH such as $PIXEL could offer a great risk/reward trade from now on. The only large cap gaming coins that has been consistently strong is $SUPER (+51%), but there have also been smaller coins that had pumps, such as $KARRAT (+73%) and $BIGTIME (+88%).

• Apparently there is a new ‘$TRB’ in town, ie a very manipulated coin that defies gravity by going up constantly without any narrative, and with a very consistent negative funding rate. It is $REEF, which is up 7X in September, and is up from $20M mcap to around $150M mcap. This coin is very manipulated, so be careful if you plan to short it.

• $BABYDOGE has been listed on Binance spot on the same day as $NEIROCTO and it lead to a more than 2x pump from $150M mcap to $400M a the end of the month.

• During the first week of September we had a new narrative that was around EtherVista, which is both a new kind of DEX and the pumpfun of Ethereum. The $VISTA coin pumped from $1M to $30M but it then bleed down to $5M mcap.

Best-performer list :

Best-performers among large caps in September :

• SUI : +123%

• SAGA : +114%

• TAO : +106%

• ALT : +71%

• POPCAT : +68%

• FTM : +64%

• ENA : +54%

• SEI : +63%

• WIF : +62%

• SUPER : +51%

• AVAIL : +42%

• ARKM : +41%

• PEPE : +38%

• W : +38%

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

• NEIROCTO : +2200%

• BABYDOGE : +138%

• CEL : +124%

• ETHW : +112%

• CKB : +107%

• DEAI : +92%

• AERO : +96%

• NPC : +72%

• BIGTIME : +88%

• GEOD : +67%

• KARRAT : +73%

• PRCL : +81%

• ZEUS : +65%

• MOG : +60%

• CAT : +50%

And even smaller ones :

• SPX : +1550%

• MOODENG : $300K → $320M mcap

• REEF : +624%

• HEHE : +425%

• ENQAI : +350%

• JOE : +255%

• CETUS : +223%

• MOTHER : +203%

• LMEOW : +216%

• ANDY : +119%

• SCF : +118%

• CROWN : +108%

• VISTA : $1M → $30M mcap before selling off

Thank you for reading this article,
Cheers,
Viktor.