On January 20, 2025, Trump returned to D.C., and within just a few days, not only did he bring multiple executive orders but also the $Trump and Family Coin combination. An unprecedented global financial baptism not only triggered upheaval and shock but also caused people to stay up all night in FOMO. Solana was pushed to an all-time high, and Meme undoubtedly became the biggest focus.
Setting aside profits and losses, the question is: is this the starting point or the endpoint?
No matter what Trump does, as mentioned in a previous article The Landscape Change After Trump's Victory, Trump is merely leveraging the trend of Crypto to make decisions favorable to himself at a historical juncture. However, it can be said that the market value of $Trump Coin is built on the foundation of global consensus formed through the reverse construction of value expectations over several cycles in the Crypto market. In simple terms, he has achieved the pinnacle of monetizing Meme and narrative consensus.
Although the frenzy for Meme continues until the end of January, the value fluctuations of single coins and the time spent in the trenches are constantly shortening under high-risk PVP games. It can be said that the quantitative experience of long-term investors and professional financial practitioners, including myself, has been completely overturned in front of gmgn and tgbot; however, the essential trend remains clear: the peak always summarizes and archives the consensus of the previous stage, and the first curve of Crypto growth is about to end.
tl;dr
1.Zero-sum games and the 7 giants at the table
2.The significance of the first curve of Crypto growth and its strong bow's end
3.Negative-sum games and the dilemma of the “last cycle” VC coins
4.The trend of RYA/RWA and the rise of PayFi
5.**Crossing the Chasm: **The Second Curve of Crypto Growth
6.The development pattern of Crypto under compliance issues and the situation in various countries
7.Opportunities and challenges in 2025 under dramatic changes
1.Zero-sum games and the 7 giants at the table
Over sixteen years and four cycles, Crypto has clearly slowed down in its wealth creation myth, with the most significant manifestation being its inability to escape the $3 trillion curse. Starting in 2024, although the approval of ETFs has shifted the competition for BTC reserves from individuals and institutions to nations, net outflows have offset a large amount of net inflows, and the growth dividends of the first curve have gradually shifted from positive-sum games to zero-sum games.
At last year's Token2049 in Singapore, I likened the situation to a table with 7 giants. There is an interesting scenario at a Texas hold 'em table: if you come to the table today without knowing who to scam, then today you are the one being scammed; this is zero-sum gaming.
As the Crypto market gradually trends towards zero-sum games, the 7 giants that are gradually emerging at the table are: Position 1 - Exchanges, Position 2 - Financial Institutions (such as lending protocols and custodians), Position 3 - Market Makers, Position 4 - Project Teams, Position 5 - Whales, Position 6 - VCs, Position 7 - Retail Investors. In previous cycles, due to the rapid growth trend of the first curve and the large amount of incremental funds, the overall situation was in a positive-sum game across cycles, and the awkward relationships among the 7 giants were not obvious. After entering 2021, the first curve clearly slowed down, and the net growth rate of funds significantly decreased, quickly leading the table into zero-sum or even negative-sum games. Currently, when Position 6 awkwardly stares at Position 7, Position 1 has clearly felt the industry risk of "when the lips are gone, the teeth are cold," and thus began to raise the threshold and charge higher security fees to Positions 4 and 3. Position 4, which should have served Positions 5 and 6, had to turn to compete with them due to the change in game rules, and over time, accumulated grievances made the game difficult to maintain.
2.The significance of the first curve of Crypto growth and its strong bow's end
The significance of the first curve of Crypto growth is similar to the missionary processes of the Bible, Buddhist scriptures, and the Quran. It uses narratives to depict faith and aims to gradually change subsequent production relations by building consensus among the first wave of people.
However, today's world is different from history; one reason is the rapid development, and the other is the speed of pragmatic verification. Therefore, merely proposing consensus without implementing growth is unsustainable; sixteen years and four cycles have already reached the limit. In this cycle, whether it is DePIN, RWA, and BTCFi, or AI Agent, DeSci, and ZK; without real on-the-ground Real Yield and Real Application, it is difficult to continue relying on the beta dividend for development. Trump's victory has already been the last continuation of the strong bow's end under narrative consensus; $Trump is essentially the endpoint of the first curve of Crypto growth.
3.Negative-sum games and the dilemma of the “last cycle” VC coins
At the end of the first curve of Crypto growth, the competition on the remaining battlefield is indeed fierce. Despite high valuations in VC financing, high FDV with low liquidity, narratives without products that are hard to falsify, high TVL with long staking that is difficult to redeem, and high listing/MM fees still enduring, the dilemma is very apparent.
In the final zero-sum game, if the boundaries of the first curve are not broken, not only is it impossible to create miracles out of nothing, but it will also lead to vicious competition forming negative-sum games. Many people predict that the "last cycle" is precisely such a result. The "last cycle" is certainly not the end of Crypto, but rather that VC coin projects with only narrative consensus and no real on-the-ground Real Yield and Real Application are unsustainable.
It is worth mentioning that Meme here is a special layered product; from the perspective of narrative consensus, it still belongs to the first curve, but it breaks people's understanding of finance in an unprecedented way, quickly launching and engaging in rapid games, abruptly breaking through the issues of high VC valuations, high FDV with low liquidity, high TVL with long staking, and the costs associated with listing and MM. By destructive means, it has established a milestone for the end of the first curve while laying a legitimate foundation for the second curve through a globally breaking approach.
4.The trend of RYA/RWA and the rise of PayFi
In mid-January 2025, I attended an LP meeting in Salt Lake City where I met a project founder from Nigeria. David demonstrated his popular PayFi product and told me that currently in Nigeria, the usage of Crypto in payments, finance, and assets has exceeded 50% (including fiat currency). Due to a large population lacking the qualifications to go through traditional financial systems' KYC, they directly use Crypto tools.
I remember in 2014 at a conference in Beijing, I heard Baidu CEO Li Yanhong say that China is a place where the industrial revolution and the internet occurred simultaneously, so new things like internet finance would rapidly emerge in China. It is evident that more than a decade later, the combination of basic industrial development and the Web3 revolution is similarly unfolding rapidly in Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and South America. Logistics, trade, manufacturing, and financial settlement companies, including those from China, the U.S., and Russia, have been forced to adapt quickly to the demands of their partners in this change.
Therefore, the mainstream Crypto market does not need to self-justify any adjustment conditions; the data from Nigeria and India has already shown us that the transformation brought by 2025 will exceed expectations. The second curve of Crypto growth under Real Yield Assets, Real World Applications, and the rise of PayFi is already within reach.
5.Crossing the Chasm: The Second Curve of Crypto Growth
Clearly, the second curve of Crypto growth is about practical applications, Real Yield & Real Application.
In the book "Crossing the Chasm," it mentions that the development and popularization process of a new thing has five stages: 1. Innovator, 2. Early Adopter, 3. Early Majority, 4. Late Majority, 5. Laggards.
Among these, there is a significant chasm between stages 2 and 3, where the vast majority of products find it difficult to cross or take a long time to do so. For Crypto, the $3 trillion curse is evidently this chasm itself; Early Adopters are the group that accepts the narrative, while the Early Majority are those who must see substantial applications producing economic effects.
Once Real Yield & Real Application are achieved, the second curve of Crypto growth will rapidly explode, becoming the mainstream economic, financial, asset, and payment transaction and settlement foundation of this world.
$Trump has played a milestone role at this point; it is both an endpoint and a starting point. Coupled with Trump's gradual fulfillment of his election promises to loosen Crypto restrictions, measures like rescinding SAB 121 have also paved the way for the growth of the second curve, providing sufficient legitimacy.
6.The development pattern of Crypto under compliance issues and the situation in various countries (and regions)
In the face of such sudden changes, most countries and regions find it difficult to provide a clear preemptive legislation for management. For many areas mentioned earlier in Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and South America, Trump's victory and open policies provide the most comfortable decision-making conditions for reactive legislation to manage Crypto, thus accelerating the rapid outbreak that will occur this year.
Singapore and Hong Kong still tend to favor preemptive legislation in financial management, but after Trump took office and introduced Crypto-related executive orders, there has also been a corresponding trend of easing. The Ethereum ETF and 1.9 rise issued by Hong Kong in 2024 are both forward-looking and carry certain risk pressures, which have gradually eased at this stage, and in recent MSO's continued management regulations, further standardization of stablecoin issuance and usage is being implemented; Singapore, in this process, will likely lean towards a certain degree of reactive legislation based on existing laws, for example, the DPT regulatory framework under PSA has not yet made further detailed provisions for the issuance and use of stablecoins outside of payments, leaving a significant possibility for this space to remain reactive.
In summary, as of the end of January 2025, the overall impact of global compliance regulation on the development pattern of Crypto under Trump's administration is tending to be friendly. This situation cannot be said to be a stable state, but it has won some time for the transformation of the second curve of Crypto growth.
7.Opportunities and challenges in 2025 under dramatic changes
The turning point brought by the second curve is bidirectional, meaning it will have a qualitative and far-reaching impact on both the Crypto Market and TradFi.
For the Crypto Market, this is a habitual shift similar to changing gears; this process is likely to alter the original inherent four-year halving cycle, or at least change the impact of emotions and consensus on the fluctuations of bull and bear cycles based on the original foundation, and thus will certainly change the industry's criteria for evaluating projects, assets, and application values. For the global economic, financial, asset, and payment environment, it represents a more fundamental challenge, which will alter the dollar-based financial credit system built on U.S. credit since the Bretton Woods rules, as well as the economic realities largely dominated by Keynesian thought.
免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。
