The safest 20x this cycle by Slowmad

Published Dec'24, updated Oct'25

The path to 20x gains is straightforward.

Most people just don’t see it because they get distracted by the prospect of small quick gains; Instead of holding a deeply undervalued coin and waiting a few months for 20x gains, they chase the latest, hottest fad coin for 2x gains over a few days or weeks.

This is, by the way, why the narrative on Crypto Twitter changes from week to week; Today it’s new generation memecoins, next week it's Murad’s memecoins, and two weeks later it’s A.I. agent coins, etc.

The problem with jumping narratives is the low upside relative to the downside. To get a total 20x return you’ll need many consecutive wins on these plays… and the risk on each of them is easily a -60% loss. Very few people end up making money this way.

Here, I offer a better approach. While the downside could also be -60% (as an example), the upside is 20x - 40x and the chance of walking away richer is meaningfully higher.

To understand the thesis, we first have to distinguish between two narrative categories:

• Speculative
• Actual use case

Speculative narratives are those that people buy into primarily because they believe someone else will buy their bags later at a higher price, for the purpose of further speculation.

The most obvious example of a speculative narrative is memecoins. Practically no one buys a memecoin because they find value in it; People buy it only because they want sell it at a higher price to later speculators... much like how a ponzi system works.

Speculative narratives can be profitable and have their place… but I’ll explain why this is not the narrative category you want to bet on in 2025.

💪 Actual use case

An actual use case is something people (even outside of crypto) are already using today for its own sake.

Examples: Store of value, payment transfers. People around the world today are willing to pay for assets that hold value, and/or to send payments quickly and conveniently.

Now the thing about the crypto industry is that we've yet to find many actual use cases for blockchain technology.

The few we’ve discovered are:

• Store of value: Bitcoin
• Payment transfers: Stablecoins
• Lending/Borrowing: Lending/borrowing protocols
• Currency exchange: DEXs

These are use cases people value for their own sake (and are willing to pay for), not merely as something to speculate on.

Also note that these use cases are in the same sector: Decentralized finance (DeFi).

This is not a coincidence. Crypto was, after all, invented to disrupt the traditional finance industry.

So this has been crypto’s primary use case thus far: To make transactions uncensorable, more secure, more transparent, faster, cheaper, and accessible to a global audience 24/7.

Now it’s important to separate these two narrative categories (speculative vs actual use case) because this bull run is inherently different from all prior bull runs: It’s driven by institutional capital.

🏦 The institutional cycle

While all prior cycle bull runs were led by retail capital, this bull run has been - and will continue to be - driven by institutional capital, starting with the spot Bitcoin ETFs.

Here’s the thing about institutional capital:

• It’s multiples larger than retail capital.
• It can only allocate into serious projects. You won’t see BlackRock buying Iggy Azalea's MOTHER coin for example; Institutional capital will only flow towards projects with at least some semblance of utility.

So what kind of projects are institutions most likely to buy into?

We won't have to guess, because BlackRock CEO Larry Fink has already spelled it out for us (BlackRock is the world's largest asset manager).

“We believe the next step going forward will be the tokenization of financial assets.”
— Larry Fink, chairman and CEO of BlackRock

This is the cycle where TradFi officially enters crypto. And the ramifications are still poorly understood.

🤝 From PvP to PvE

Crypto's inevitable turn towards more institution-friendly projects will largely be the result of the extreme PvP nature of the memecoin trenches.

The majority of (what's left of) crypto natives got rinsed hard by countless insider memecoin launches and bundled scams, leaving only a very small number of participants with enough capital and willpower to keep trading.

It's only a matter of time before people get sick of these scam games and look towards more PvE plays based on real fundamentals and - importantly - supported by fresh capital from outside the crypto industry.

We've already seen the first signs of this in the popularity of the Bitcoin/Ethereum ETFs and Digital Asset Treasuries (DATs).

There's no longer any question: TradFi capital is moving into crypto, and vice versa.

This is a dynamic everyone in crypto will want to capitalize on... but there aren't many ways to do that.

The best way, with by far the best risk-reward, is with IXS Finance.

💰 Biggest crypto asset x Biggest TradFi asset

IXS Finance offers an exclusive crypto product: BTC Real Yield

What is BTC Real Yield?

Put simply, BTC holders (institutions, companies, whales) deposit native BTC with regulated custodians, and use that as collateral to borrow USDT/USDC at zero interest, which is then used to buy yield-producing RWAs like US treasuries.

The net effect is institutions continue to get full exposure to Bitcoin AND can now earn a 4% - 10% yield in dollars, backed by the government.

How is BTC Real Yield different?

Anyone can get WBTC on Ethereum and deposit it on Aave to earn yield (as an example). What makes BTC Real Yield different?

The first answer is that DeFi yields on BTC are nowhere near the ~4.5% offered by US Treasuries; Right now, the yield for WBTC on Aave is <0.01%.

But there are bigger differences that set BTC Real Yield apart from DeFi yields: Institutions will not touch DeFi.

You see, in order to earn a yield in DeFi, institutions have to:

• Trust the issuer of wrapped BTC
• Trust the chain the wrapped BTC is issued on
• Take smart contract risk
• Trust the devs behind the unregulated platform (especially after what happened with Celcius and Voyager)
• Accept unstable/unsustainable yields, which are often denominated in altcoins (that go down in price sooner or later)
• Take on regulatory enforcement risk

These risks might be acceptable to individuals with a small amount of bitcoin, but to institutions with 8, 9, 10 figures in bitcoin the risk of participating in DeFi is much too high.

Because of this, an estimated 95% of bitcoin is earning zero yield right now. That's $2.3 TRILLION of unproductive capital sitting in wallets doing nothing.

Now the number one priority of BTC treasury companies (220+ public and private companies, including Tesla, Coinbase, and most BTC miners) is to maximize shareholder value. They are legally obligated to earn yield on their Bitcoin... if there's a safe way to do it.

And this is where BTC Real Yield makes a BIG difference - it exposes institutions to NONE of the above-mentioned risks.

Why IXS Finance?

The key factor here is that almost no other company can do this. IXS Finance is one of the only ones with the licenses and connections to offer BTC Real Yield legally.

Here's what people don't yet realize: It takes *years* to get the licenses required to offer a service like this. Both IXS Finance and InvestaX (parent company run by the same CEO) took 5.5 years to get theirs.

This means that when the narrative starts running, IXS Finance will have practically no competitors.

• IXS Finance has obtained the Bahamas DARE license suite (last page)
• InvestaX is licensed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS)

₿ Betting on Institutional adoption + Bitcoin

So far, the only ways to to bet on the growth of Bitcoin are:

1. Buying BTC itself
2. Buying stocks of a BTC treasury company
3. Buying Bitcoin L2s or BTC-Fi related tokens

With the BTC Real Yield program, people can now bet on institutional adoption + growth of Bitcoin by buying the IXS token.

The utility of the token is straightforward: 0.5% - 1% of the fees generated from this service is used to buyback and burn the token.

🫱 But wait, there's (much) more

IXS is more than just about betting on institutional adoption + Bitcoin growth. 

Since 2017, the team has been building the infrastructure, networks and connections to be a key player at the center of the incoming RWA boom.

They've developed the technical and legal expertise to offer a full suite of RWA services from beginning to end - from tokenization to distribution to trading and settlement.

They've launched the whole shebang: A fully compliant RWA launchpad, RWA DEX, SaaS integration, and even blockchain (UnionChain).

This is a whole other topic to dive into, which deserves a whole writeup on its own. For now, understand that IXS Finance caters to an RWA market worth $250 TRILLION.

That's 100 times the size of the Bitcoin market cap.

Feel free to DYOR in this area. I'll post a detailed writeup on this later at the appropriate time.

For now, if you understand this diagram you understand why IXS is positioned to be one of the leaders of the incoming bull market.

IXS Finance CEO interview

🔎 Company background

• Started in 2017 and officially launched in 2021 (survived the bear market)
• BTC Real Yield is only one of their products; There's also an RWA launchpad and RWA DEX that are already up and running
• Founders are fully doxxed and regularly give interviews and talks
• Backed by Coinbase Ventures (Coinbase has partnered up with BlackRock)
• Advised by Balaji Srinivasan and Gabriel Abed (Binance chairman)
• A Binance infrastructure provider for the upcoming BNBChain RWA DEX
• Collaborating with LINE (Asia's largest messaging app) to offer institutional-grade RWAs to 196M monthly users
• Founding member of Union Chain, partnering with 4 major asian exchanges to offer RWAs to 20M+ KYC'd users

With credentials like these one would expect the valuation of the IXS to be in the billions... but - and this is the kicker - right now its market cap is just $20M!

📋 $IXS tokenomics

• 180 million tokens in total
• All tokens fully circulating (no unlocks, no VCs left to dump on you)
• Deflationary (portion of fees used to buyback and burn IXS)
• Not listed on any tier 1 CEX yet; Given existing connections to Coinbase and Binance, a listing on those exchanges is likely

IXS Token utility:

• Discounted platform fees
• Stake to receive RWA tokens
• Liquidity pool pairing
• Governance

IXS contract address: 0x73d7c860998ca3c01ce8c808f5577d94d545d1b4 (on Ethereum)

More details at https://www.ixs.finance/for-individuals/ixs-token

📈 IXS price target

I'm not one for public price targets because - once popular enough - they don't get hit. I've seen this happen too many times.

So instead, I'll give you some guidelines as to how I'm thinking about this, and you can make your own estimate.

🛌🏻 The comfy downside

So yes, IXS has enormous upside.

But what makes it a golden opportunity is the exceptionally low downside.

Think about it. The project:

• is backed by Coinbase and a preferred RWA partner to Binance
• is advised by Balaji Srinivasan & Gabriel Abed (Binance chairman)
• is run by fully doxxed founders with decades of business experience
• is licensed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore with some of the strictest regulatory standards in the world
• is positioned in the sector that BlackRock singled out as the 'next step' in an industry about to enter alt season
  
• has a fully circulating token supply (fully unlocked)

AND is right now trading at a mere $20M market cap.

Consider: How much lower can the price realistically drop from here?

For reference, here are some of its peers in the RWA sector (with similar backers, consumer segment, licenses):

• ONDO - $2.9B market cap, $9B FDV
• SYRUP - $447M market cap, $481M FDV
• CFG - $165M market cap, $198M FDV
• CPOOL - $103M market cap, $125M FDV
• CHEX - $74M market cap, $74M FDV
• IXS - $20M market cap, $20M FDV

As the RWA narrative starts running, these numbers will go up.

And when that happens, what are the chances IXS will be trading below $20M?

Unless there's a major protocol hack, scandal, or World War 3 occurs, I'd say the chance is close to zero.

This makes IXS, for me, the comfy-est hold with far more than 20x potential.

Keep in mind: I’m not saying that IXS will deliver the biggest gains in 2025.

I’m saying that IXS has the highest upside relative to downside (the best risk-reward profile).

There are tokens that have larger upside, but with much larger downside; Just like there are tokens with smaller downside, but with much smaller upside.

If you’re conservative and just want a 2x return, there are safer bets to be making.

If you’re super aggressive and want 1000x gains regardless of risk, IXS is probably not suitable for you.

Depending on your personal circumstances and risk tolerance, IXS may or may not be something you want to bet on.

For me, it’s the safest way to hit my portfolio targets this cycle.

🗒️ TLDR

• Unlike past cycles, this cycle has been - and will continue to be - driven by institutional capital.
• Institutional capital is magnitudes larger than retail capital and can only allocate into legitimate projects with real utility.
• The RWA sector is currently overlooked and underestimated.
• Most RWA projects are either unregulated and/or not actually in operation.
• IXS Finance is one of the few that's fully regulated and fully running.
• IXS Finance is one of the very few projects that cater to long tail RWA, a massive untapped market.
• IXS Finance is one of the very few projects with an actual use case + high speculative potential.
• Founders are doxxed and regularly interact with the public.
• Backed by Coinbase Ventures and partnered with Binance, BNB Chain.
• Advised by Balaji Srinivasan & Gabriel Abed (Binance chairman).
• Not listed on tier 1 exchanges yet; Given existing connections, a listing on Coinbase and Binance is likely.
• Collaborating with LINE (Asia's largest messaging app) to offer institutional-grade RWAs to 196M users
• Co-founder of Union Chain, partnering with 4 major asian exchanges to offer RWAs to 20M+ KYC'd users
• IXS token supply is fully unlocked.
• Market cap is currently $20M.
• Even a conservative peak price target should deliver an easy 20x from current levels.
• The downside risk is - in my view - exceptionally low relative to the upside potential
• Given real utility, quality backers, strong team, speculative potential and (currently) low market cap, IXS is the safest >20x I’ve found this cycle.
  

🔎 DYOR

Website: https://www.ixs.finance/

InvestaX: https://www.investax.io/

X: https://x.com/IxsFinance

IXS token: https://www.ixs.finance/for-individuals/ixs-token

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ixsfinance

Telegram: https://t.me/ixsfinance

Discord: https://discord.gg/uHyFMyXj

Overview report (by Avish Investments): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1u5cdrPMw4HddT3u-oy3ihyeu7wrBLJob/view

 Thanks for reading

I hope this has been useful.

If you'd like to hear more about my views on crypto, follow me on X/Twitter.

Cheers 
Slowmad

P.S. If you have any questions or feedback, let me know at: chris[at]digitalslowmad[dot]com