Original | Odaily Planet Daily
Author | Wenser
Overnight, the bull and bear dynamics have changed.
As Trump speaks again, the US stock market and crypto market, which have experienced trillions of dollars in decline, have begun their price recovery journey. Nevertheless, it is still difficult to conclude that we have returned to a bull market, and many people call the current market a "monkey market" due to Trump's ambiguous stance and flip-flopping remarks - where the market can jump up and down based on one person or one message.
In light of this, the author will briefly outline the current market stage and the future breakthrough direction of the crypto industry from a personal perspective, and discuss with readers. Note: Part of this article was inspired by Odaily Planet Daily author Azuma (@azuma_eth), for which I express my gratitude.
The Sign of Crypto Chaotic Era: After US Debt Exceeds 36 Trillion, Trump Takes Office
1, In February 2024, the total US federal government debt grew to 34.4 trillion dollars; as of March 6, 2025, this number grew to 36.56 trillion dollars. Compared to 35.8 trillion dollars in January 2025, it has increased by 0.76 trillion dollars in just a few months.
Many may not have a clear concept of this number, but comparing it with the total market value of the crypto industry would provide a more intuitive feel - as of the time of writing, according to Coingecko data, the total market value of the crypto industry is about 2.7 trillion dollars, in other words, the current US debt scale is approximately 13.5 times the total crypto market value.
Such a massive national debt scale is a focus of Trump's second term besides economic development, international relations, and political hegemony.
Under the efforts of Trump himself, whose mind is dominated by business thinking, and his "internet celebrity government team", although the crypto industry has ushered in a friendly regulatory period, it has inevitably entered a "chaotic era" - that is, it must face and accept the strong political situation of the US president Trump's "moving one hair and affecting the whole body" on the crypto market and even the global economy.
This is also an expected outcome after the previous political celebrity token issuance farce of Trump's official MEME coin TRUMP.
Every crypto player must switch their trading operations more frequently, not attempting to fully understand Trump's thinking, but grasping the trend impact of speeches, news, and messages on the market.
2, From the logic of continuous US debt existence, RWA (Real World Assets) and the only proven effective base of so-called RWAFi is US debt.
The fixed income support behind this mainly benefits from the current US dollar pricing system in the crypto market and the guarantee of the US authoritarian government's political and military power.
3, In such a volatile and changing market, one thinking method that crypto players must master is - ripple thinking path. Viewing an event as an inducing factor, it will spread its influence like a stone thrown into water, and the corresponding people/assets/market/tokens/projects/ecosystems will be affected by the gradually spreading ripples. Including the previous decentralized trust crisis faced by Hyperliquid due to the JELLYJELLY short selling event, which is a very intuitive case experience. To achieve this, crypto players need to develop good thinking habits and information sensitivity. Personal suggestion is to draw more circle layer diagrams, which is very helpful for improving transmission thinking.
Hidden Replacement of Crypto Protagonists: From VC to KOL Migration, Liquidity Attention Matters More
4, Compared to previous cycles, the current bull market cycle starting from 2023 has more thoroughly demystified VC institutions. However, currently, this trend has no obvious good or bad implications.
The reason is that in the VC-led crypto cycle, VC institutions have the ability to create momentum, quickly "maturing" one or several mainstream concepts through funds and narratives in the short term, thereby concentrating the main liquidity in the crypto industry, quickly achieving the full lifecycle of "initial launch-operational growth-TGE token issuance-secondary circulation", and at that time, the final destination of many projects was still CEX exchanges.
After the "high FDV, low circulation" VC disk is gradually replaced by so-called "Fair Launch" inscriptions, community disks, and MEME coins, the market's attention is further diluted and fragmented, and KOLs (broadly, referring to anyone who can influence market sentiment and user focus in the short term) become the distribution center of market attention and market liquidity. At this point, the crypto market no longer has the patience of "grinding for years", and countless people return to the chain, starting an passionate PVP game. This is why the "KOL crypto cycle" has more and more plates, and on-chain front-running becomes faster. Because after Bitcoin ETF and Ethereum ETF launch, incremental funds are extremely limited, and stock funds can only engage in zero-sum games, the market is a bloody game of who runs faster, and everyone fears becoming the last bag holder. Because this means the maximized loss will be borne by oneself.
So, what everyone knows is that entering the crypto market in 2025, especially after TRUMP, MELANIA, LIBRA, and other notorious MEME coins have conducted an unprecedented consecutive harvesting of new entrants, the current crypto crowd is playing a greater fool game of passing the parcel.
5, Given this, most people have to accept the market's subtly established game rules - timely stop loss, don't hold for long, and the ultimate trading purpose is still BTC or depositing principal in exchanges.
6, From the perspective of new entrants, the Solana ecosystem currently has more appeal, although this appeal will shift with the emergence of wealth-making effects. Compared to this, Ethereum ecosystem and other EVM ecosystems' attractiveness to new entrants is increasingly weak. Including the Base ecosystem that has been shouting "massive consumer adoption", which is difficult to hide its decline under circumstances of Friend.tech nearly stalling, Farcaster's high financing but inability to grow, MEME coin ecosystem's small-scale operations, and the entire ecosystem's high dependence on trading volume for survival.
Potential Engines Leading the Next Bull Market: Medium Return Yield Products
7, Based on the above situation, as the crypto market's connection with US stocks and the US economy deepens, and the crypto coverage population gradually approaches the global peak, crypto mainstreaming has reached halfway. Although the total crypto market value is still below 3 trillion dollars, it is undeniable that asset management institutions and giants controlling billions or even larger funds have set their sights on the crypto market.
From risk appetite and investment purposes, unlike small-fund market retail investors seeking high multiples and high risks, institutional large-scale funds may prefer stablecoin interest-bearing products, and relevant decision-makers are more willing to use derivative stablecoins to obtain anti-inflation or value-added returns, which is also an important reason why PayFi, DeFi restaking, and RWA tracks have received more institutional attention and even bets in this cycle.
For many institutions, they need to find a balance between traditional financial deposit interest and crypto high returns - above the regular deposit's 2%-3% interest rate, but below the crypto project's starting at 20% yield, I personally believe that 6%-12% might be a relatively suitable yield range (for example, Coinbase's maximum USDC deposit rate is 12%).
8, For ordinary retail investors, since they don't have large funds, they can participate in similar on-chain projects or crypto lending platforms through the "interaction farming" approach - diversifying positions, hedging risks, liquidity mining, periodically "harvesting" (generally recommended 1-2 weeks), ensuring principal safety while obtaining more returns through platform points or airdrop rewards.
Of course, the premise is absolutely not playing with unreliable products and unreliable investment teams.
9, As for specific products, everyone can screen projects on Solana ecosystem, ETH ecosystem, Sui ecosystem, and balance between lesser-known and promising returns.
Staying Sober in a Chaotic Market: Identifying Trustworthy Individuals and Institutions
10. For most people in the market, including you and me, following strategies remain the best choice. In this regard, Azuma recommends the following specific list of individuals and institutions:
- Coinbase CEO Brian Amstrong;
- BitMEX Co-founder Arthur Hayes;
- Trader Eugene (Tangent Capital Co-founder);
- Multicoin Capital (deep Solana ecosystem player, mainly referencing its non-Solana ecosystem investments or shill targets);
- Polychain; Dragonfly; Pentera (BTC ultra-early investment capital institution) and Coinbase Ventures.
Additionally, some institutions' investments seem illogical, casting a wide net, and previously benefited more from trend advantages or ecosystem positioning. Their investment operations should not be referenced but rather seen as contrarian indicators, such as a16z (a well-known Web2 capital institution that helped create a partial bull market in 2021-2022H1 through Web3 narrative, with an investment style of broad flooding and extremely valuing KOL-style CX capabilities of asset management personnel, with returns mainly dependent on luck or probability); Yzi labs (formerly Binance Labs, where CZ himself admitted 80% of investments were losing money, and despite being an important part of the Binance system, its success rate does not match its industry status).
11. Another indicator of a project or product's reliability is its official website. If it's a shell or has an extremely crude UI, it's best to abandon the idea of donating money to potential high-risk Rug projects, like ZKasino.
12. A new bull market or cycle will definitely arrive, and the market makers will likely focus on new tokens rather than old ones. Existing "old coins" represented by AI agent concept tokens will probably only expect stop-loss rebounds and will struggle to achieve profit-taking rebounds. Judge the selling point accordingly.
13. After AI's emergence, application importance has been infinitely elevated. Technology is no longer a shackle for countless crypto projects but a tool enabling "what you think is what you get". Regardless of the product, ultimately, it needs applications to reach a broader audience. Paying attention to popular applications in traditional AI fields might harbor opportunities for another massive crypto explosion.
