Trump's return, eliminating corruption, Mago's dog house, killing all around.
It was originally thought that the map expansion was only for small islands, but it turns out that the global hegemon will also follow this old example; it was originally thought that the ETH L2 ecosystem was chaotic enough, but it turns out that the global trade system has gradually disintegrated; it was originally thought that Web3 settlement was just a dream, but it turns out that stablecoins have already become a new pillar.
On February 1, 2025, Trump began "fulfilling his promises" by increasing tariffs on Mexico and Canada, with an additional 25% tariff on goods imported from the two countries, except for Canadian energy products.
Although Trump's style has always been extreme pressure, the final tariffs may not necessarily be 100% realized, but once the bow is drawn, there is no turning back, and Trump 2.0's core economic thinking is to use tariffs to replace "domestic taxes" to bring the US back to the good old days without the IRS.
Of course, Americans are not so stupid as to believe Trump's rhetoric and really think that increasing tariffs and price stability can coexist. In the completely deindustrialized US, any commodity is an imported product, and it is just that from the US temple to the people, they have all entered a kind of quasi-wartime state, and temporary pain is necessary to win the final victory.
Crypto Wartime Economy
After the start of the Tariff War 2.0, the crypto market was hit hard, with BTC falling to $97,000, and the entire market entering a downward cycle, as weak as the traditional A-shares.
In theory, the crypto market is a global market, and even if one is not optimistic about the US tariff war against the whole world, there should still be a massive influx of funds into the market for hedging, but the premise is that the crypto circle is indeed a global market.
Unfortunately, the emergence of DeepSeek has shattered the stereotypical impression that the US stock market is a global market. If people's memory is good enough, they will also remember that not long ago, on December 26, 2024, when DeepSeek V3 released its technical report, the crypto circle was the earliest industry to accept and recognize its advanced nature, earlier than the general public.
Image caption: Overall trend of AI Agent
Image source: CoinGecko
At this time, the AI Agent is still thriving, but the real crisis is that $TRUMP and DeepSeek R1 were launched one after the other, from January 17 to January 20, a short three days, the world experienced two shocks: the president will really issue coins, and China's AI will temporarily lead the US.
Or to put it this way, the crypto circle's AI Agent narrative is based on two premises:
- The US's AI is the leader in the world, and the AI Agent is first and foremost a Pax Americana AI Agent, which needs OpenAI to maintain its lead in algorithms and NVIDIA chips to be irreplaceable in hardware;
- The AI Agent has not generated real profits, nor has it attracted real users, the liquidity that $TRUMP has absorbed will not flow back blindly, it is still a narrative economics, not a PMF product.
The world line converges, returning to the trade war.
Compared to the dramatic decline of the US stock market's Magnificent 7 giants like NVIDIA, the AI Agent track and the chaos of the Ethereum Foundation and Binance seem insignificant.
NVIDIA's chips, the price of BTC, if this is the Plan A and Plan B of the US revitalization plan, then both are currently being questioned, and the only solution is to re-establish the confidence of the global capital market in the US.
Tariffs and trade wars will only be the first step, and the core is the issue of US stock market rise and interest rate cuts. The US needs to cut interest rates to stabilize the economy, but at the same time, as a global financial country, the stock market cannot have any problems, and can only go up and not down, so there is only the option of a rise in the US stock market.
In normal economic theory, these two are not easy to achieve, but the magical $TRUMP can bypass the existing fiscal-monetary system, and tariffs and trade wars will also create government revenue in the short term, and there is also Musk's mass layoffs, the remaining funds can only be gathered into the capital market, unless someone really goes to the US to open a factory.
In this system, the short-term driving force is that the tariffs need to be effective, so it can be inferred that even if Canada compromises with Trump, Trump's tariffs on the whole world will only escalate.
In the long run, the fiscal role of cryptocurrencies will be inevitable, either the US dollar-Federal Reserve system will break free of its nominal independence and reach closer political cooperation with Trump, or the Trump government will continue to use unconventional means to "command" the US dollar.
But there is no doubt that for cryptocurrencies themselves, the current driving force is no longer blockchain technology or decentralization ideology, after all, Vitalik himself admits to having ultimate control over the Ethereum Foundation, the real ruler of the crypto circle is now the real political power, the largest CEXs have to take sides, the issuers and operators of USDT have to take sides, and even every coin trader has to make their own choice.
The state of war has become a reality in 2025.
Two Worlds
Looking at the main melody of 2025, the fragmentation of world trade has become a reality, regionalization has actually replaced the old globalization centered on the US and based on the WTO mechanism, the only thing left is that the US dollar is still the global currency.
In fact, Trump has repeatedly warned the BRICS countries not to challenge the status of the US dollar, but everyone knows that if the US does not participate in global trade, using the currencies of non-trading countries is very strange, but everyone also knows that there is no country or organization whose currency can challenge the status of the US dollar.
Perplexed to this extent, it is unprecedented.
Blockchain technology has made some attempts, such as the mBridge project led by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), which focuses on the settlement between CBDCs, with the participation of the central banks of China, the UAE and other countries and regions, as well as enterprises;
But the BIS cannot bridge the divided world, the BIS has withdrawn from the mBridge project, the reason is no other, too many BRICS countries are involved, the BIS is afraid of being accused by the West of helping Russia and other countries to evade sanctions, the BIS can only launch the Agora project, with participants from South Korea, Japan, the EU and other countries, clearly divided between East and West.
Web3 projects have also continued to advance, the PayFi concept has entered the long-term construction stage, Huma Finance hopes to connect the post-Ripple era of cross-border enterprise settlement, the means of course, can only be stablecoins, but the power of a single project is ultimately limited, B2B has become the most mainstream choice, and has nothing to do with ordinary people.
The Web3 super individuals are at a loss, in the era of CEX explosion, holding BTC, ETH, and even BNB can outperform, but in the PVP era, the super individuals have to face the super-fast response of robots, the cannibalistic attacks of coin issuance groups, and the unscrupulous PUA of unscrupulous VCs, the old world has ultimately disappeared.
Last year, Web3 settlement based on stablecoins may have been the biggest trend in the industry, but it is difficult to say now, after the AI Agent went out, the whole industry has entered a boring and lengthy soap opera mode, and has begun to complain about family affairs, VCs say they are suffering from 6 times the return, CEXs say they have achieved a platform coin market cap of 100 billion and a trading volume of 100 trillion.
Conclusion
There is no true empathy in this world, humans cannot empathize with their own kind, but before the epic collapse of the US stock market, let's hope we still have our own chance.
From any angle, this DeepSeek surprise attack is just a rehearsal for the next long and agonizing battle, let's hope we can all be prepared before that.
