The bull market cycle of 2020-2021 was supported by ecosystems like DeFi and NFTs. DeFi has survived well into now and is getting better, but this cycle lacks a true narrative that has landed. What remains is endless PVP and nihilism. After Trump and his wife launched their tokens, the meme coins that were hyped on SOL for a year experienced a cliff-like collapse, extinguishing the nascent AI agent spark.
Yesterday, the president of the Central African Republic also issued his own token on Twitter, with a token model similar to TRUMP's, and it is 'unclear' if Twitter was 'hacked'. All the 'nobles' around the world are doing this, and liquidity has been drained. The crypto circle has become a bloodsucking ground in this cycle. If this phenomenon continues, the crypto field will eventually decline, remaining stuck in the online PVP stage, where the pool will not grow but shrink.
Since the birth of the crypto industry, this cycle has been the hardest to make money. In the last cycle, there were only a few thousand altcoins, and only a few dozen mainstream tokens, leading to a liquidity feast where even the most insignificant projects could skyrocket. However, in this cycle, the number of altcoins is in the tens of thousands, and those with a bit of fame launch with market capitalizations in the billions of dollars. It is impossible for another altcoin season to happen; only swing markets and high-quality projects that truly achieve product landing have a chance.
Ethereum's gas fees are now routinely below 1 gwei, and Bitcoin often falls below 1 sat/byte, with on-chain activities at a freezing point. For the crypto field to continue, it needs growth, with significant developments in areas like crypto payments, value storage, DeFi, AI agents, and RWA.
However, there is no need to be overly pessimistic. After the internet bubble emerged in 2000, the market vigorously hyped internet technology, but ultimately found that 'the technology is good, but it can't make money in practice.' After the bubble burst, it wasn't until years later that companies like Apple, Google, Amazon, and Facebook experienced explosive growth, entering a healthy development track. Amidst a year-long market anxiety over SOL's PVP, while projects that can still settle down to build will become increasingly rare, resilient projects will always stand out.
In addition to the already established ecosystems like crypto payments, value storage, and DeFi, I personally believe that the fields of RWA, AI, and the digital economy based on NFTs have greater opportunities for realization.
I won't elaborate on the RWA field; there are potential tokenization demands for hundreds of trillions of dollars in global assets. OnDo, supported by BlackRock, is also developing well, and there is a high probability of quality projects emerging in this area. The AI agent flame that was extinguished by the collapse of liquidity may one day reignite; AI agents have always had imaginative payment and trading possibilities through crypto assets. Moreover, since the meme coin hype, no one has mentioned the grand narrative of Web3. Data storage and the data economy have yet to produce leading projects; the internet's foundation is data, and the commercialization of data itself is also highly imaginative. The two major 'failed' projects, FIL and ICP, we hope they can rise up and realize the visions in their white papers.