Crypto Analysts Upbeat for 2024 After a Year of Building in 2023

The freight for a single barrel of crude oil has soared to $41, approaching half the oil price, and for a single trip, the freight was once enough to buy an oil tanker. The Middle East crisis has led to a structural shortage of shipping capacity in the Strait of Hormuz, coupled with ship-to-ship transfers extending turnaround times. VLCC freight rates have skyrocketed from an annual average of $9.2 million to $77 million—an increase of more than eight times. Refiners’ profits are being rapidly eroded, the average price of second-hand oil tankers has reached a historic high, and, unusually, surpassed the price of new vessels.

The logic of AI and solar energy demand continues to play out, yet prices are falling against the trend—macroeconomic forces such as a strengthening US dollar and rising real interest rates have completely suppressed fundamentals. Speculative funds offloaded $1.6 billion in a single week, marking a yearly peak, while CTA net short positions reversed by $2.6 billion to the highest level this year. However, Goldman Sachs analysts believe that the extreme short positioning itself is building reversal momentum, highlighting an asymmetry; once macro headwinds subside, a retaliatory rebound could be easily triggered. After a similar shakeout last time, silver surged 15% in six weeks.

Anthropic counts "total revenue" in its cloud sales, while OpenAI only recognizes the "net revenue" based on profit-sharing. This discrepancy in accounting standards has directly triggered a decline in tech stocks. Even more striking, the highly touted "annualized revenue" is significantly inflated, with OpenAI's actual revenue expected to be only half of this figure. Anthropic's actual revenue also exhibits nearly a 50% gap compared to its reported numbers.