1️⃣ The difficult situation of the current bull market
1. No main track, funding structure changes
Unlike the previous bull market driven by clear main lines such as DeFi, NFT, and GameFi, the current market lacks core tracks that can continuously attract funds.
Or rather, at present, this round seems more like a series of random hits, such as the inscriptions in 2023 and the AI Agent concept in 2024, which, despite short-lived explosions, failed to form long-term consensus, insufficient to retain existing funds while attracting external hot money.
The inscription track gradually quieted down after February 2024, and the hype around AI Agents only lasted for 1-2 months until the end of 2024, with some project prices halving multiple times. As of today, March 2025, few people are discussing these.
Subsequently, market funds shifted towards the hype of celebrity coins in the Solana ecosystem. These short-term speculative projects lack fundamental support, and after the heat fades, secondary rebounds are rare, leading to rampant liquidations. The ultimate result is that large funds quickly withdraw, leaving the market sluggish.
Additionally, the main force of this bull market has shifted from retail sentiment and wild speculation to traditional financial capital, which prefers relatively stable assets with large capital capacity, like Bitcoin, thereby squeezing the survival space of altcoins.
2. The lifecycle of new tracks is shortened, leaving retail investors trapped in the 'takeover dilemma'
The market presents characteristics of 'high volatility and short cycles'; retail investors often enter at high positions after the hotspots explode, but the decline of tracks is much faster than expected, leaving retail investors with little time to exit.
For example:
Although various Meme projects on Solana attracted considerable speculative funds in the second half of 2024, they collectively plummeted after December, with liquidity quickly drying up.
The 'anticipated overdraft' of traditional value coin projects: wormholes, staking, and other tracks rely on technological breakthroughs, but the progress of technology is out of sync with market speculation, leading to a decoupling of price and value. Coupled with the characteristics of VC coins, reaching a high point upon listing has become a consensus, leaving retail investors exhausted from taking over.
In this environment, if one continues to use the previous strategy of 'hunting undervalued projects', it is easy to get trapped.
3. Changes in the external environment
The Federal Reserve's interest rate hikes and geopolitical conflicts have led to a rise in global capital risk aversion. Without the fully accommodative funding environment of 2021, it is difficult to replicate the 'flood of capital' market of 2021.
2️⃣ Breakthrough direction: restructuring the crypto ecosystem
1. Find the intersection of new narratives and real demand
Deep integration of AI and blockchain: focusing on on-chain AI model training, data ownership and other sub-scenarios, such as achieving decentralized settlement of AI services through smart contracts.
RWA (Real World Assets) scaling: tokenizing traditional assets like real estate and government bonds, using regulatory frameworks to attract institutional funds; currently, giants like BlackRock have already entered related tracks.
Depin (Decentralized Physical Infrastructure): Integrating idle hardware resources through token incentives to build a distributed network (such as the Helium model) to address pain points in the real economy.
In a word, it cannot be too vague; there must be a point of reality for value to stabilize.
2. Technological innovation and underlying facility upgrades
Some disruptive technological innovations are needed; it cannot merely be another layer2 setup, which is essentially just another play.
3. Transformation of retail investor strategies: from 'lying to earn' to 'dynamic gaming'
Investment strategy: allocate 70% of funds to anti-dip assets like Bitcoin, SOL, and 30% for speculative tracks (like Meme coins, new public chains)
Mindset shift: abandon the 'bottom-fishing mentality' and only intervene when there are clear growth signals in the track (such as a surge in TVL or whale accumulation).
Ultimately, the 'difficulty' of this bull market is essentially the growing pains of the crypto market transitioning from a wild era to a mature financial system. Continuous learning is necessary to capture new growth dividends in a timely manner.
