Author: Cora Xu
Editor: Manman Zhou Evan
No one expected that on the first day of his inauguration, the new US President Trump would not mention cryptocurrencies at all.
The president remained silent, the president simply issued coins. On January 18, Beijing time, President-elect Trump posted a message on a social media platform, announcing the launch of his personal Meme coin Trump Coin ($TRUMP), and in less than half a day, the market value of the Meme coin had already approached $30 billion.
Two days later, Melania Trump, the wife of Trump, also announced the issuance of her personal Meme coin Melania Coin ($MELANIA) on the X platform, and its market value also quickly broke through the $5 billion valuation. The Trump family's cryptocurrency project World Liberty even spent $9.29 million to purchase 88.02 WBTC through the Cow Protocol after the inauguration ceremony.
Just as people were expecting Trump to announce a new cryptocurrency policy in his inaugural speech and further ignite the cryptocurrency market, Trump surprisingly remained silent in the cryptocurrency field.
This silence has caused the entire cryptocurrency sector to plummet this morning, with CNBC data showing that Bitcoin plunged 4.47% and Ethereum plunged 4.45%. Among them, SOLANA saw a larger decline of 14.32%.
Behind the Bitcoin frenzy are unpredictable political signals, manipulative market makers, pervasive greed investment sentiment, and a group of new players standing at the door, wanting to enter but hesitating.
Even now, when the price of a single Bitcoin is hundreds of millions of times its initial issuance, there are still investors loudly questioning its rationality on the other side of Bitcoin. But there is also a group of early entrants who have already stood in the cryptocurrency river, steadfastly adhering to their beliefs and awaiting the arrival of a new era.
As the original financial investment logic is gradually being undermined, who is celebrating Bitcoin in the waves? And who has held on to their true self in the midst of greed?
In this tug-of-war between skeptics and believers, Silicon Rabbit has delved into in-depth dialogues with practitioners in different industries in the Web 3 world, and seen the diverse perspectives in the Web3 industry from their viewpoints.
#01 Su Su: "The best investment opportunity is when you're young, investing in Bitcoin is also the same"
Engaged in Web3 for 3 years, firmly believes in Bitcoin
Currently working in Web3 operations
In Su Su's view, Bitcoin and Ethereum are the "orthodox" best representatives in the cryptocurrency world.
As the first officially launched cryptocurrency, Bitcoin was once synonymous with the cryptocurrency market, but with the addition of more than 12,000 new cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin's dominant position in the market has declined, although it still occupies 60% of the market.
Unlike traditional financial transactions, the 24/7 trading exchanges, decentralization, and peer-to-peer transactions have given cryptocurrencies the label of "freedom". With development, Bitcoin has also seen three major turning points.
Bitcoin was initially seen as a symbol of support for cryptocurrency technology, a way of value recognition. In 2021, Bitcoin futures ETFs were approved by the US Securities and Exchange Commission, and Bitcoin leaped from a "niche asset" to become part of the "mainstream asset" portfolio.
Su Su also first truly encountered Bitcoin in this wave. At the time, she was busy preparing for the postgraduate entrance examination, and coincidentally received a part-time offer from her former boss, who needed her help with operations. With a bit of curiosity and a touch of hesitation, she stepped into the door of Web3.
Looking back on her early days, Su Su feels that Web3 has brought about a earth-shattering change in her life. "Now I can more clearly recognize that financial behavior is not far from our lives, and behaviors like NFTs and blind boxes are essentially financial products." After going through the cryptocurrency industry, she began to have a financial phobia.
This allows her to maintain a sense of calm in the most turbulent cryptocurrency industry, where there are always people hoping to become the next wealth legend, but once they get on the gambling table, it is not easy to break free from the greed of human nature.
"I went through the last Bitcoin bull market, bought in at the low point of 1-2 thousand, and also resolutely added positions at 7-8 thousand. In the trading process, I would often get excited by the price fluctuations, and also become anxious and doubtful about the low point." She recalled her emotional journey when she first started trading, and after going through several stages of growth, she finally chose to be a "coin holder", buying regularly and trading appropriately. After roaming the industry for a while, Su Su feels that this period of experience has really tempered her, "I now feel that the best investment is when you're young, because even if you lose money, it's only a very small amount that won't affect your life, and you can also gain new values from it."
If volatility is the underlying tone of the cryptocurrency industry, then faith is the core pillar. Su Su firmly believes that Bitcoin is a long-term investment, and can even be compared to the next "digital gold". "It's hard for newcomers to have this kind of faith, but after going through a few cycles, you start to be attracted, and in the process of constant verification, you start to reshape your cognition and eventually start to believe. The most appealing thing is that you will meet people of all different styles, and the emotions in the industry also change greatly, but there are always people who are eager to join."
#02 Alexis: Cryptocurrency exchanges are also crazy in recruiting, Bitcoin becoming a new settlement unit
Engaged in Web3 for about 3 years
Works in Web3 design, veteran exchange employee
Similar to Su Su, Alexis also received an offer from a Web3 company Bybit around 2021, and first delved into Bitcoin and blockchain, gradually becoming part of the crypto circle. At that time, the price of Bitcoin was around $40,000.
Working at a Web3 company is very different from traditional companies, with some companies' bonuses or performance not being traditional fiat currencies, but certain niche stablecoins or Bitcoins. Alexis remembers that her first project bonus was USDT, a virtual currency that pegs cryptocurrency to the US dollar. Over the past few years, as the price of Bitcoin has risen, the price of USDT has also risen slightly, and in 2022, Alexis chose to exchange the USDT for RMB, making a big profit compared to when she first received the bonus.
In addition to project bonuses, Web3 companies also have various promotional activities to encourage employees to speculate on and play with cryptocurrencies. "A long time ago, the company would have a Bug bounty program, where if you found a Bug on the platform, the company would reward you with a bonus, paid in cryptocurrency." Alexis mentioned that over the years, there are now quite a few people who have achieved financial freedom by earning Bug bounty rewards.
Financial freedom seems to be no difficult task in the Web3 world, and various wealth legends are constantly stimulating people's senses. Alexis has witnessed many people achieve financial freedom in various ways. A friend's friend, a post-00s girl, made a big profit by issuing her own coins and "retired" with glory.
But on the other side of the coin, there are also people who have lost everything due to one wrong move. On December 5, 2024, Bitcoin saw a single-day drop of over 10%, with the total amount of liquidations across the network exceeding $1.087 billion, directly wiping out the accounts of 210,000 investors. Prior to this, the bankruptcy announcements of crypto exchanges Hotbit and Bittrex had already left many people with heavy losses. Even around Alexis, there are various victims, including a relative who was lured into buying a lot of 'Altcoins', only to have the coin issuer abscond, resulting in a devastating loss.
Despite the constant risk warnings, many people are still rushing into the Crypto space, with some even taking pay cuts to jump ship from their high-level positions at big companies to join the Web3 industry.
"However, most people still have a traditional Web2 mindset, and they don't actually do Crypto trading themselves, so suitable talents are still quite scarce," Alexis mentioned. On platforms like Boss Zhipin and Maimai, we also find that many job postings explicitly require Crypto trading experience, and the salaries for the same positions may be several times higher than in traditional consumer industries.
When asked why many of his colleagues chose Web3 companies, Alexis learned that most people might believe that decentralization and internet transformation will become a desirable direction, perhaps hiding the next wave of internet opportunities.
#03 Project Manager May Wong: Building a Professional Investment Information Platform, Over 80,000 Millionaires Investing Over $100 Million in Bitcoin
One of the Web3 entrepreneurs, the founder of SoSoValue
A seasoned investor for many years
Unlike many who simply observed the Bitcoin market frenzy, May Wong was quick to recognize the potential of Web3, becoming a representative of those who seized the opportunity. At the end of 2022, she started her own Web3 venture, building a Crypto information platform for professional investors called SoSoValue.
May Wong believes the financial industry is undergoing a new round of revolution, and the industry lacks a third-party information tracking platform to continuously monitor financial data. SoSoValue was born out of this, providing information services to most investors. Regarding the origin of the name SoSoValue, she mentioned it is an abbreviation for "most of the Crypto, nowadays no value just so-so" - referring to the fact that the value growth is mainly in top Cryptos like Bitcoin and Ethereum, while others are just "so-so".
Currently, SoSoValue has grown to 200,000 daily active users, with its main user base coming from North America, Singapore, Japan, and Southeast Asian markets like Vietnam, with over 8 million registered active users. On January 8th, SoSoValue announced it has raised an additional $15 million in funding led by Hongshan, SmallSpark, Mirana Ventures, and Safepal, reaching a valuation of $200 million.
According to May Wong, the recent user growth has been very rapid, with almost all the new users coming from the traditional investment market to the Crypto market. However, she believes that most VC firms are still relatively unfamiliar with the secondary market, so an informative platform with a familiar interface will also help them acquire the information they want more quickly.
May Wong believes that in the financial system, the "Top to Down" principle is generally followed, with the most important information placed at the forefront, which is relatively consistent with traditional industries. But a key feature of the Web3 industry is that the exchanges operate 24/7, leading to a long-term focus on information.
At the same time, the information tables for some emerging tokens also embed comprehensive information like TokenBar, official website, and whitepapers, allowing users to see the fullest information in the shortest time. "Currently, in the TokenBar group, the website has a user base of around 3 million, with over 30,000 daily active TokenBar users." She found that SoSoValue's users are more focused on the growth of different sectors, and in some emerging markets like Vietnam, Russia, and Turkey, user growth has been very rapid, especially among younger people who have a strong acceptance and ability to get started.
Before 2024, Web3 was in a Crypto Native state, with the main players being a group firmly believing in the Bitcoin ecosystem, and the market cycle changing according to the mining cycle. But as Bitcoin has broken through barriers by introducing stablecoins and obtaining ETF certification, it has gradually gained recognition in the mainstream market. "At least in the major North American market, Bitcoin has been recognized by most investors."
Research data also corroborates this. According to a joint report by New World Wealth and Henley&Partners, as of August 2024, the global number of Crypto millionaires grew by 95% year-over-year to 172,300 people, and the number of individuals holding Bitcoin assets over $1 million grew by 103% to 85,400 people. Among them, 325 people have Crypto assets exceeding $100 million.
"Originally, only a small portion of people were eagerly anticipating Crypto, so they watered the seed frantically. Now we can see this seed is starting to sprout. We look forward to it growing into a forest in the future." May Wong also believes that Crypto is still in a relatively early stage of its ecosystem, and the market landscape is far from settled.
It is precisely because of this that there are divergent views within the industry on how the Crypto ecosystem should develop next, specifically, how decentralized exchanges and centralized exchanges can coexist. On this, May Wong believes that centralized exchanges are more like traditional trading markets, with lower user trading and learning costs, and are also more likely to attract investment users. Decentralized exchanges, on the other hand, are more inclined towards the ideal state, which is also the ultimate goal of many Crypto enthusiasts.
"Those who can focus on Crypto now are the lucky ones. Going forward, the only thing people need to do is to ensure they don't get kicked out of the game." May Wong believes that many people still see Bitcoin and Crypto as a casino. "The first step is to be able to distinguish between fraud, gambling, and financial activities. Finance has incremental value to society, while the first two do not. We believe that in the long run, Crypto will be the foundation of the new financial system in the digital age. The second step is to be willing to truly participate in Crypto, becoming a believer in Crypto. The third step is to be able to guarantee that you won't be kicked out of the industry by its fluctuations over the next 20 years. Then, the new era belonging to you will come."
#04 Investment Manager Kevin: Bitcoin Ecosystem Growth, Meme Coins Exploding
Web3 Investment Manager, Focusing on Web3 Ecosystem Building
Contrary to the hot secondary market, Kevin also feels that investing in Web3 projects in the primary market has become more difficult. "The overall perception is, not bad, not good." He added: "But Web3 is growing as a whole."
As an investment manager, rather than focusing on retail investors' attention to Bitcoin price fluctuations, Kevin has found that in the past two years, the price fluctuations of Bitcoin have increased market attention, but there has been no substantial breakthrough in the Bitcoin ecosystem building. "The more complete the Bitcoin ecosystem is, the higher the liquidity of Bitcoin, and the more diverse the ways to play with Bitcoin."
From an overall market observation, some tokens are moving towards a more universal market, and around the growth of certain communities, the technology and ecosystem of Bitcoin are being integrated and intertwined, and there are still some new opportunities in Web3.
For example, some derivative Meme Coins, which usually attract users by building an interesting community, such as Dogecoin (DOGE) and PNUT, have been soaring, with Dogecoin's market cap already reaching $55 billion.
Secondly, the NFT market around Bitcoin symbols has also been extremely hot. One of the top NFT tokens is DOG•GO•TO•THE•MOON (abbreviated as DOG), whose market cap has already exceeded $300 million. According to OKX data, DOG has over 73,000 holders.
With the emergence of these new markets, the ways to play with Crypto have become more diverse, but it is not easy to find good projects.
Just like the Web2 era, the investment logic of Web3 is still to find the best people, establish the best projects, and build convenient, fast, and clean-looking applications.
Currently, Kevin is mainly focused on two main directions. On one hand, he is focused on projects that can deeply integrate with public chains; on the other hand, he is focused on bringing traditional Web2 ecosystem applications into Web3, breaking the existing ecological application scenarios. However, as more high-tech talents have turned to the hot AI circle, the loss of Web3 talents has also been quite severe, and there are very few quality projects.
"The most important thing for investing in Web3 projects now is reasonable valuation," Kevin also mentioned that in the second half of this year, Web3 is entering a cyclical "vicious circle", where some hot money has flowed into Web3 projects, driving up project valuations; the high valuations have driven a lot of industry bubbles; the large number of bubbles have also led to a new round of valuations being difficult to continue, and the number of participants in transactions has also decreased. After going through this cycle, many projects have found it very difficult to maintain healthy development.
"It feels like we haven't really reached the Web3 moment yet, and the current ecosystem should be somewhere between Web2 and Web3 - around Web2.5," he added.
#05 Investment Manager Sam: Cryptocurrencies Can't Break Out of the Financial Circle, Good Projects Have Investment Returns of Up to 10 Times
Web2 to Web3 Investment Manager
Focus on the Growth of Excellent Web3 Projects
After joining the Web3 investment track for two years, as a Web3 investment manager, Sam found that the Web3 wave is getting bigger and bigger, sweeping more people into this arena, but good projects are becoming fewer and fewer, and it can even be said that there are few new projects emerging.
He believes there are two main reasons: on the one hand, as exchanges become more and more standardized, the threshold for new coins to be listed on major exchanges is already very different from a few years ago, so investing in an early project, the project is difficult to be listed, the unlocking terms are also more stringent, and it is also difficult for funds to exit and obtain high returns, making the investment environment more difficult. On the other hand, the overall investment funds have shrunk this year, and more hot money has flowed to the hot AI direction and BTC ETF, the money flowing to the Web3 ecosystem is not as much as the previous bull market.
Sam chose to shift to Web3 investment around 2022, and within two years, he has also invested in some good Web3 projects.
Compared to traditional Web2 investment, in the early stage of Web3, investors pay more attention to the degree of technological innovation of the entrepreneurs' direction for Web3. "Although the academic background requirements for Web3 company founders are not as high as before, they still focus on talent, team resources, and resource conversion capabilities."
In terms of specific directions, there are not many innovative directions in this round of the Web3 bull market. Although the industry has been emphasizing the transformation of the Internet, the development trend is increasingly focused on the upgrade of decentralized finance and payments, and Web3 is increasingly like onchain fintech. Other application experiences such as games and social networking still have a large gap with Web2 products, and to expand more application scenarios, more stable and powerful underlying technology chains are still needed.
"Now the entire Web3 industry is definitely moving forward, and the performance of the underlying technologies is also gradually improving, but there are few revolutionary products and technologies that have emerged, and the overall industry investment is also slowing down," Sam mentioned that in the previous bull market, he also came into contact with many good projects, some of the excellent investment returns could reach 10 times.
#Conclusion
What will the regulation of cryptocurrencies, which has plagued them for years, go after the election of former US President Trump? "The best expectation is that after Trump takes office, nothing will be done." Most of the interviewees mentioned this unanimously. From the conversations, we can also see that there is still a great risk of the turmoil brought about by Trump's inauguration.
From the interview situation of multiple interviewees, most people believe that Bitcoin can stabilize around $100,000 this year, which is the current market consensus. Most interviewees will also mention, "whether you have money or not, you can store a little Bitcoin." They have basically reached a consensus that Bitcoin is digital gold.
"The money in the bank is not your money, the money is only your money when it is in your decentralized wallet." They said in unison. Now for most Bitcoin holders, their most basic expectation is that Bitcoin can outperform the current inflation.
Currently, most Web3 investments are concentrated in Southeast Asia and North America. China's relatively developed financial payment system has also led many early investors to look more towards Chinese entrepreneurs, and we can see that many Chinese people are quietly making big money under the hype.
Although most people still see Web3 as a distant future, in the Internet era, each transformation is filled with various forms of Internet development. Where will the technological tide flow? Perhaps time will give this group of would-be dreamers a new answer.
