If I had to summarize the crypto market of 2026 in one sentence, it would be:
The market is no longer paying for narratives, only pricing for cash flow. 💰
Over the past decade, the core driving force of the crypto industry has been 'storytelling'—new narratives, new paradigms, new revolutions. But as we enter 2025, a significant turning point has emerged:
Protocols that can sustain profit are being repriced, while projects that cannot generate real income are being systematically eliminated.
And this change is far more than just a market issue; it is a switch in the entire industry's growth logic.
🔥 1. From 'seizing existing stock' to 'creating incremental value': PvP ends, PvE begins
For a long time, crypto trading infrastructure has been trapped in a dilemma:
Platforms are competing for the same batch of users and the same liquidity.
This is a typical zero-sum game (PvP) —
You gain one point, I lose one point.
⚙️ Technical barriers have been completely dismantled
New infrastructure upgrades are changing everything.
Now, creating a derivatives market no longer requires a complete engineering team:
No need to build a matching system from scratch
No need to separately design clearing and risk control
No need to build complex margin logic
Market creation has been standardized as an 'on-chain deployment behavior'.
Thus, the threshold is 👇
‘Do you have a technical team?’
Has turned into 👇
‘Do you have capital + Do you have reliable data sources?’
📌 The focus of market innovation has begun to shift from engineering capability to market design capability.
🧠 Market = Demand + Data + Settlement
Under the new paradigm, a functioning market only needs three elements:
📊 Real demand: Is anyone willing to bet on a certain event or asset?
🔗 Reliable data: Can the results be objectively determined?
⚡ Efficient settlement: Can it be low-cost and automatically executed?
This directly opens up asset spaces that traditional finance finds hard to cover:
🏗️ Local real estate prices
📦 Commodity premium index
📈 Industry trend signals
🎭 Cultural and attention metrics
These are not 'mainstream assets', but real speculative demands that exist.
👉 The crypto market is no longer just a 'shadow of finance', but is expanding the boundaries of finance itself.
💸 2. Valuation logic reversal: from 'storytelling' to 'profit sharing'
If the keyword of the last cycle was Narrative (narrative),
So the only keyword for the next cycle is left with one:
Cash Flow
📉 The liquidity bonus has disappeared
The era of unlimited easing has ended.
Funds are no longer 'rising indiscriminately', but are starting to actively filter:
❌ Projects without revenue fall for longer
✅ Protocols with sustainable cash flow are more resilient and are revalued earlier
The entry of institutional funds has accelerated this change.
🏦 The valuation methods of traditional finance are taking over the crypto market
More and more participants are starting to view projects with the following indicators:
Annual revenue 📊
Net profit 💵
Transaction fee scale 🔄
Buyback and distribution mechanism 🔥
User real activity level 👥
Tokens are no longer just 'future imagination', but quasi-equity assets.
When the protocol clearly links revenue with Token, the signals from the market are very clear:
Fundamentals are the new consensus.
🚀 The leaders have already appeared
Some protocols are already ahead:
📈 Trading volume and position size have long occupied the forefront of the industry
🔥 A large proportion of income is used for buybacks or value capture
💎 The buyback scale accounts for a double-digit percentage of the circulating supply
Meanwhile,
Lending
Aggregation trading
Public chain ecology
Also starting to reprice around real economic activities.
📌 Relying solely on technological advancement or capital endorsement can no longer support long-term valuations.
🔮 3. Prediction market: Turning 'uncertainty' into data assets
The true meaning of prediction markets is not in 'betting'.
But it lies in 👇
Let people use real money to price their judgments.
This is an extremely efficient information aggregation mechanism.
📊 Price = Collective Probability
Unlike polls and sentiment analysis, prediction markets have three advantages:
⏱️ Real-time response
💰 There are funding constraints
🧮 Probability is directly quantified
The price curve itself is a 'collective expectation time series'.
This type of data is being viewed as important alternative data (Alt-data):
Macroeconomic trading
Risk hedging
Media analysis
AI model training
📌 The market is no longer just 'reflecting information', but is 'producing information'.
🏛️ Regulatory fragmentation, but the trend is irreversible
The current environment shows obvious differentiation:
🌍 The West: Moving towards institutionalization and compliance
🌏 Asia: Overall conservative and suppressed
In the short term, this is a limitation;
In the long run, this is a filtration.
What remains in the end is not a 'gamble',
But rather 👇
Infrastructure that transforms collective beliefs into standardized information.
🧭 Conclusion: In 2026, it only belongs to the protocols that can make money
The crypto industry is entering a brand new phase:
❌ Storytelling ≠ Valuation
❌ Traffic ≠ Value
✅ Income
✅ Sustainable
✅ Value capture
This is not a bear market, but a necessary path to de-bubbling.