$850 Billion Will Be Added To Crypto Alt-Season Market Cap Over The Next Few Weeks | Capital Nexus - By Shepley Capital
Welcome to the latest edition of Capital Nexus – Shepley Capital’s crypto newsletter.
We said this edition of Capital Nexus would be a big one… and we meant it.
Crypto Alt-Season Watch: The Tide Is Turning
The signal many investors have been waiting four years for is here: Ethereum is starting to outperform Bitcoin dominance.
This is the pivotal shift that almost always marks the beginning of Crypto alt-season, the moment when investor capital rotates out of Bitcoin and flows straight into top altcoin projects. Only this cycle is much different from every other to date. Crypto has never been in the global spotlight as much as today’s time. Government strategic reserves are being created, policies & financial definitions are starting to be made clear, multiple ETF filings are entering public record. Crypto has never been in a better driver’s seat to succeed. But despite the high praise that Bitcoin and Alts are receiving, one truth remains hidden from public discussion: Not every project is destined for that winning glory. 95% of all alt-coins will fail.
If you’re old enough to remember the dot com bubble, you’d remember that only very few sites survived the adoption phase of the internet. Only those sites that had some form of advantage over the others made it into the publicly accepted spotlight. That’s exactly where alts are headed. Only coins with proven real-world utility will survive the digital purge.
Ironically, most investors gate-keep their portfolio projects away from the public eye as they believe in securing the opportunity for themselves, but crypto isn’t like Entrepreneurship. Where entrepreneurs work in silence to take over an industry, investors rely on each other to bring capital into that shared project. For one to win, all must win. Projects such as XRP, Ethereum, & Solana understand this. That’s why they’re considered the greatest digital financial opportunities within the crypto space. Each of these three projects have cemented their place in global adoption through proven real world utility & high-level marketing strategy.
Moving down the line of performing alt-coins, we predict that $XLM & $HBAR will follow closely behind the XRP ecosystem, adding value in their own uniquely designed ways. $SUI will be a leader within the Layer 1 space, accruing the investment of those looking to expand their portfolio within that sector. $LINK is a big one in our book, being more than just a project. Chainlink is setting the global standard for compliance & regulation across the entire industry. If a project is to succeed in the market, they essentially must comply with the Chainlink way. That’s an incredibly powerful position to be in as a project, which is why we see $LINK as a huge long-term asset to hold. Honestly, there’s an argument to be had where $LINK should join the top 4 projects, settling behind $BTC, $ETH & $XRP, knocking Solana down a level. Maybe even above $XRP but we won’t push it too far.
Then we’ve got our final few projects that we see doing well, but not quite leading in their adoptive fields. $DOT, $ADA, $LTC, $AAVE, $HYPE, $QNT all make that list, with honourable mentions to $BNB, & $CRO as top exchange based coin performers. All these projects add something to the crypto ecosystem… well all besides Litecoin ($LTC), that coin feels like it’s been around since the beginning of time. Considered the ‘Silver’ of crypto, its perceived value will probably carry it through the adoption whitelist.
Meanwhile, Memecoins will be a different beast altogether. We saw thousands… Maybe even millions of investors lost billions in capital trying to jump on winning memes back in 2021. All it took was a 24 hour launch for someone to hype up a coin, shill it to their followers, build up liquidity, then rug pull thousands of investors for a tidy profit. Good news is this run hasn’t shown the same level of hustle from Memecoins. Bad news is people still believe that all it takes is one ‘lucky’ find to make millions and retire forever. Either way, our advice on Memecoins is simple; avoid them forever. 99.9% of Memecoins will bleed investor capital to zero. Whilst that 0.01% like $SHIB, or $PEPE will pop up along the road, there’s quite literally a 1 in 800,000 chance that you find it before $100 Million market cap, and another 1 in 50,000,000 chance you find it before $1 Million market cap (based on true figures).
If history is any guide, most of the top 25 projects should easily 2x during this run. But it’s those few projects that we listed we believe should exceed the rest in overall growth & global adoption. There are of course a few other start-up projects that we’re keeping our eye on, but for the meantime we’ll keep them in our upcoming ‘One’s to Watch’ section.
Security Alert: Supply Chain Attack Targeting Crypto Investors
A large-scale supply chain attack kicked off September 8th where hot/warm wallet seed phrases & send address attacks were silently targeting investor wallets. We won’t leave you in suspense here… if you hold your portfolio in a cold/hardware wallet, you’re 100% safe. Just make sure that you triple check that send address on your 2FA if you were planning to send assets across wallets. If you use a hot/warm wallet, i.e hold your portfolio on an exchange or browser extension/app wallet, your transactions are at greater risk. Here’s what to look out for:
The attack swaps crypto addresses on the fly during withdrawals and deposits. This means funds could be redirected without you noticing unless you verify the destination address. Most exchanges are advising that users avoid making unnecessary transactions until patches and security updates roll out. But being realistic, some people don’t have that financial luxury of not being able to access their funds. Our advice is that if you must transact, carefully verify the entire string address before sending. Read it out loud if you have to, you’d rather spend that extra 30 seconds making sure than losing it all for good.
There’s no news yet as to if any resolution has emerged from this event, but regardless of any digital attack or not, wallet security should already be your number one priority in crypto. We’ll be providing full crypto security education over in our Free resources at shepleycapital.com very shortly, so be sure to keep an eye out for that.
Shepley Capital’s “One’s to Watch” Project List
If you’ve been signed up to the newsletter for more than the past few days, you would’ve received our first edition of our “One’s to Watch” project spotlight that went out. But if not, we’re happy to re-introduce our first project, or refresh your memory for those who already received the full rundown. We won’t give you the full spill again, but we’ll be posting it in our ‘One’s to Watch’ portal over on shepleycapital.com real soon.
Introducing Redbelly Network ($RBNT). Born out of academic research at the University of Sydney in 2017, with the goal of creating a blockchain that is fast, secure, and scalable enough for global finance. In 2021, it was spun into a joint venture between Block8, the University of Sydney, and CSIRO (Australia’s national science agency), marking the shift from research to commercialisation.
Unlike most public chains that either sacrifice security for speed or stay secure but bottleneck at scale, Redbelly was engineered compliance-first, capable of 400,000 TPS with zero forks or double spending. For context, that’s vs. Bitcoin’s ~7 TPS and Visa’s ~56k TPS.
This puts Redbelly in the rare camp of government-compliant blockchains with proven RWA traction. That’s a different league to most projects still in testnet or theory-stage. If successful, Redbelly could become one of the largest RWA tokenisation blockchains globally, competing with players like Polygon, Stellar, and SUI, but with stronger regulatory ties. Whilst a comparison like this is a big ask for a start-up project like Redbelly, a core differentiator between Redbelly & most others is its Australian first compliance, potentially positioning itself as being seen as the preferred home-grown RWA option over other projects.
At this stage, $RBNT isn’t an immediate buy. Volume and sentiment don’t yet confirm accumulation. But the combination of government support, institutional credibility, and RWA tokenization makes it one of the few projects with genuine long-term utility potential. For now, we’re keeping it on our Ones to Watch list, with a close eye on volume shifts and market structure changes that could signal an early reversal.
And Now A Sneak-Peak Before the Big Reveal
If you’ve been actively following posts on threads, you’ll probably have seen me hint towards something big being worked on behind the scenes. Guess what… the time is finally here, and as newsletter subscribers you’re the first to find out. So here it is…
Shepley Capital is officially launching within Australia as a Crypto Consultancy Firm, tailored towards the everyday investor to help people navigate the world of crypto with confidence, knowledge & control. Whether you’re a 9–5 worker, a stay-at-home parent, a small business owner, a CEO, a student investing in their future, a retired couple looking to diversify into new asset classes, and anything in between; crypto belongs in your hands, not just on Wall Street. We see crypto as the next globally recognised, universal form of digital currency, and with that an opportunity for the everyday household to be a part of the next financial revolution.
Education within the Australian crypto space is at an absolute minimum, with very few options that the average Aussie can use to build their knowledge of crypto & blockchain. In fact, of the 5% of Australians who are actively involved with the crypto world, 98% of those Australians admit to not knowing how or where to start… and that lack of knowledge is keeping them out of one of the biggest financial shifts of our time.
Our vision is to help millions of everyday people globally have access to the tools & resources necessary to enter the world of crypto. That’s why we’re becoming one of the first Australian companies to provide a full scale crypto education & market analysis, tailored for the individual investor, delivered in one place. We’ll be offering three Tiers of membership, all tailored towards different stages of skills, experiences, time, or capital.
We won’t go in too much detail as we could quite literally fill this newsletter with stacks of value, but we will leave you with this exclusive offer:
In lead up to our full launch of Shepley Capital, we’re offering investors who are serious about positioning themselves for crypto success the ability to Pre-order our Runite Tier membership; tailored towards the everyday 9-5 earner, the family wealth builder, the university student, the first time investor, & the side-hustler & capital saver.
Packed with:
Weekly market analysis & insights.
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8x Monthly group Q&A sessions.
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Get the answers to all your investing questions in 60 seconds that others spent years to discover on their own. The Shepley Capital Library, in your pocket. At launch we have our Runite Tier valued at $2000 Annual subscription… Exclusive for those who took a chance on us by signing up to our newsletter, we’re offering everything listed & more for a once-off lifetime ownership price of $799. That means that if you Pre-Order our Runite Tier at $799 before we officially launch, you’ll never have to pay again. Check it out for yourself here: shepleycapital.com/runite.
I truly believe crypto is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that people who take the step into the crypto world will be at the forefront of a global revolution. Let me be clear, we will always continue creating Free value content daily across every platform we can. We’ll also be creating a Free resources portal over on shepleycapital.com where we’ll be posting thousands of value based content pieces regularly. Our vision will always be people first, supporting the everyday investor to achieve financial success on their crypto journey.
Closing Thoughts
The next few weeks will bring some of the biggest gains that most of you have ever experienced in crypto. But don’t mistake the up-trending chart as a permanent feature… take your profits as you go, prepare your stop-losses, & be prepared for that moment where Alt-season closes out for another four years.
See you next volume.
~ Chris Shepley
Founder of Shepley Capital
