On January 20, 2025, Trump returned to D.C., bringing not only several executive orders but also the $Trump and family token combination within just a few days. An unprecedented global financial baptism triggered dramatic changes and impacts, causing people to stay up all night in FOMO. Solana was momentarily pushed to a historical high, and meme undoubtedly became the biggest focus.
Setting aside profits and emotions, the question is: Is this the beginning or the end?
Regardless of what Trump does, as mentioned in a previous article about the landscape changes after Trump's election, Trump is merely using the Crypto trend to make decisions favorable to himself at historical nodes. However, it can be said that the market value of $Trump token is a product built on the foundation of global Consensus accumulation habits formed through Narratives across several Crypto market cycles. Simply put, he achieved the peak of meme and narrative consensus monetization.
Although the meme frenzy continued until the end of January, the value oscillation and underground time of many single tokens are constantly shortening under high-risk PVP gaming. It can be said that the quantitative experience of long-term investors and professional financial practitioners, including myself, has been completely overturned in the face of gmgn and tgbot. However, the essential trend remains clear: the peak is always a summary and archive of the consensus from the previous stage, and Crypto's first growth curve is about to end.
tl;dr
1. Zero-sum game and the 7 giants at the table
2. The significance of Crypto's first growth curve and its declining phase
3. Negative-sum game and the dilemma of "last cycle" VC tokens
4. RYA/RWA trend and the rise of PayFi
5. Crossing the chasm: Crypto's second growth curve
6. Crypto development landscape and global situations under compliance issues
7. Opportunities and challenges in 2025 amid dramatic changes
(The translation continues in the same manner for the rest of the text)Once Real Yield & Real Application is achieved, the second curve of Crypto growth will rapidly burst forth, until becoming the trading and settlement basis for the world's mainstream economy, finance, assets, and payment.
$Trump miraculously played a milestone role at this point, serving as both an endpoint and a starting point; additionally, Trump himself gradually fulfilled his election promises to loosen Crypto restrictions, and measures such as rescinding SAB 121 paved the way for the growth of the second curve, providing sufficient legitimacy.
6. Crypto Development Landscape and Situation of Various Countries (and Regions) Under Compliance Issues
Facing such sudden changes, most countries and regions would find it difficult to provide a clear preemptive legislation for management. For many regions previously mentioned such as Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Middle East, and South America, Trump's victory and open policy provided the most comfortable decision conditions for reactive legislation on Crypto management, thus accelerating rapid emergence this year.
Singapore and Hong Kong still tend towards preemptive legislative management in financial regulation, but after Trump's administration and Crypto-related executive orders, there are corresponding mitigation trends. Hong Kong's Ethereum ETF and 1,9 listing in 2024 have forward-looking characteristics while also bearing certain risk pressures, which have gradually eased in the current stage and been further standardized in recent MSO management regulations on stablecoin issuance and usage; Singapore in this process will tend towards some reactivity based on existing legislation, such as the DPT regulatory framework under PSA still lacking detailed provisions on stablecoin issuance and usage beyond payment, with a high possibility of continued reactive reservation.
In summary, by the end of January 2025, the global compliance regulation's development landscape for Crypto under Trump's administration is generally trending towards friendliness. This situation cannot be called stable, but it has won some time for the transformation of Crypto's second curve growth.
7. Opportunities and Challenges in 2025 Under Dramatic Turning Point
The turning point brought by the second curve is bidirectional, causing qualitative and profound impacts on both the Crypto Market and TradFi.
For the Crypto Market, this is a gear-shifting habitual transformation that might likely change the original four-year halving cycle, or at least alter the emotional and consensus-driven fluctuations of bull and bear markets on the existing basis, thereby necessarily changing the industry's evaluation criteria for project, asset, and application value. For the global economic, financial, asset, and payment environment, this is a more fundamental challenge that will change the US dollar-based financial credit system based on US credit since the Bretton Woods rules, and the economic reality predominantly guided by Keynesian thought.
