Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)
Author | Wenser (@wenser2010)
Overnight, the bull and bear dynamics have changed.
With Trump making headlines again, the U.S. stock market and the crypto market, which have experienced a decline of trillions of dollars, have begun their journey of price recovery. Nevertheless, it is still difficult to conclude that we have returned to a bull market; many people refer to the current market as a "monkey market" due to Trump's indecisive stance and erratic statements, where one person or one piece of news can cause wild fluctuations.
In light of this, I will briefly outline the current stage of the market and the potential breakout directions for the cryptocurrency industry from a personal perspective, inviting readers to discuss and exchange ideas. Note: Some content in this article is inspired by Odaily Planet Daily author Azuma (@azumaeth), for which I express my gratitude._
The Sign of the Beginning of the Era of Crypto Chaos: U.S. Debt Exceeds $36 Trillion After Trump Takes Office
- By February 2024, the total U.S. federal government debt had grown to $34.4 trillion; by March 6, 2025, this figure had increased to $36.56 trillion. Compared to $35.8 trillion in January 2025, it has increased by $0.76 trillion in just a few months.
Many may not have a clear concept of this number, but comparing it to the overall market capitalization of the cryptocurrency industry provides a more intuitive understanding—at the time of writing, according to Coingecko data, the total market capitalization of the cryptocurrency industry is approximately $2.7 trillion, meaning that the current U.S. debt is about 13.5 times the total market capitalization of cryptocurrencies.
Such a massive scale of national debt has become a focus for Trump during his second term, aside from economic development, international relations, and political hegemony.
Under the influence of Trump's business-minded thinking and the efforts of his "internet celebrity government team," despite the cryptocurrency industry entering a friendly regulatory period, it has inevitably entered the "chaos era"—where it must face and accept the strongman political situation created by U.S. President Trump, which affects the crypto market and even the global economy.
This was also expected after the political celebrity meme coin TRUMP was launched.
Every crypto player must switch their trading operations more frequently, not attempting to fully understand Trump's thinking but rather grasping the impact of statements, news, and information on market trends.
- Based on the ongoing logic of U.S. debt, the only proven effective base for RWA (Real World Assets) and the so-called RWAFi is U.S. debt.
The fixed income support behind it mainly benefits from the current dollar-denominated system in the cryptocurrency market and the political and military power guarantees of the U.S. authoritarian government.
- In such a turbulent and volatile market, a mindset that crypto players must master is—ripple thinking. Viewing an event as an inducing factor, it will spread like ripples from a stone thrown into water, affecting corresponding individuals/assets/markets/tokens/projects/ecosystems. The recent decentralized trust crisis faced by Hyperliquid due to the JELLYJELLY short-selling incident is a very intuitive case experience. Achieving this requires crypto players to develop good thinking habits and information sensitivity. I personally suggest drawing layered diagrams, which can be very helpful for enhancing ripple thinking.
The Invisible Replacement of Crypto Protagonists: The Shift from VC to KOL, Where Attention to Liquidity is More Important
- Compared to previous cycles, the current bull market cycle that began in 2023 has demystified VC institutions more thoroughly. However, this trend does not have a clear positive or negative implication.
The reason is that in a crypto cycle dominated by VCs, these institutions have the ability to create momentum, rapidly "ripening" one or several mainstream concepts through funding and narratives, thereby concentrating the main liquidity within the crypto industry and quickly realizing the full lifecycle of a project from "launch-operation growth-TGE issuance-secondary circulation." At that time, many projects still ended up on CEX exchanges.
As the "high FDV, low circulation" VC market is gradually replaced by so-called "Fair Launch" inscriptions, community-driven projects, and meme coins, market attention has further diluted and fragmented, with KOLs (broadly referring to anyone who can influence short-term market sentiment and user focus) becoming the hub of market attention and liquidity. At this point, the crypto market has lost the patience of "sharpening a sword for years," with countless individuals returning on-chain to engage in passionate PVP games. This is also why the so-called "KOL crypto cycle" is increasingly pouring into the market, with on-chain rushes happening faster. After the launch of Bitcoin ETF and Ethereum ETF, the incremental funds are extremely limited, and existing funds can only engage in zero-sum games, making the market a bloody game of who can run faster, with everyone fearing becoming the last buyer. This means that the maximum loss will be borne by themselves.
Thus, it is well understood that entering the crypto market in 2025, especially after notorious meme coins like TRUMP, MELANIA, and LIBRA have conducted an unprecedented series of harvests on new entrants, the current crypto crowd is essentially playing a game of hot potato.
In light of this, most people have no choice but to accept the game rules subtly established by the market—cut losses in a timely manner, do not hold long, and the ultimate trading goal remains BTC or preserving principal in exchanges.
From the perspective of new entrants, the Solana ecosystem currently has greater appeal, although this appeal may shift with the emergence of wealth creation effects. In contrast, the Ethereum ecosystem and other EVM ecosystems are becoming increasingly less attractive to new entrants. This includes the Base ecosystem, which has been continuously promoting "mass consumer adoption," but is struggling to grow as Friend.tech approaches a standstill, Farcaster has received significant funding but is unable to expand, and the meme coin ecosystem is only making small moves, heavily relying on trading volume to survive, which cannot hide its decline.
For more information regarding new entrants in the Ethereum mainnet ecosystem, see “Ethereum Falls into a ‘Midlife Crisis,’ Analyzing Development Performance from Data Dimensions”.
Potential Engines Leading the Next Bull Market: Medium Return Yield Products
- Based on the above situation, as the connection between cryptocurrencies and the U.S. stock market and economy deepens, and the population covered by cryptocurrencies approaches a global peak, the mainstreaming of cryptocurrencies has, to some extent, reached the halfway point. Although the total market capitalization of cryptocurrencies still remains below $3 trillion, it is undeniable that asset management institutions and giants managing hundreds of billions or even larger amounts of capital have set their sights on the cryptocurrency market.
From the perspectives of risk appetite and investment objectives, unlike retail investors with smaller capital or those seeking high-risk, high-reward opportunities, institutional investors with large capital may prefer stablecoin yield products. Relevant decision-makers are more willing to exchange derivatives for stablecoins to obtain anti-inflation or appreciation-type returns, which is also a significant reason why PayFi, DeFi re-staking, and RWA tracks have received more attention and investment from institutions in this cycle.
For many institutions, they need to find a balance between traditional financial deposit yields and the high returns of cryptocurrencies—above the 2%-3% interest rate of regular deposits but below the 20% starting yield of crypto projects. I personally believe that a yield range of 6%-12% may be relatively appropriate (for example, Coinbase offers a maximum deposit rate of 12% for USDC).
- For ordinary retail investors, since they do not have large amounts of capital, they can participate in similar on-chain projects or crypto lending platforms through the idea of "interaction mining," i.e., diversifying positions, hedging risks, liquidity mining, and periodically "harvesting" (generally recommended every 1-2 weeks), ensuring the safety of principal while obtaining more returns through platform points or airdrop rewards.
Of course, this approach is predicated on the fact that unreliable products and unreliable investment teams should absolutely be avoided.
- As for specific products, everyone can filter relevant projects in the Solana ecosystem, ETH ecosystem, and Sui ecosystem, balancing between lesser-known and high-return opportunities.
Being Clear-headed in a Chaotic Market: Distinguishing Worthy Individuals and Institutions to Follow
- For most people in the market, including you and me, following strategies remain the best choice. In this regard, the specific individuals and institutions recommended by Azuma are as follows:
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong;
BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes;
Trader Eugene (co-founder of Tangent Capital);
Multicoin Capital (deeply tied to the Solana ecosystem, mainly referencing their non-Solana ecosystem investments or calls);
Polychain; Dragonfly; Pentera (early BTC investment capital institutions) and Coinbase Ventures.
Additionally, I believe there are some institutions whose investments lack logic, belonging to a broad-net type, and previously enjoyed the convenience of trend or ecological advantages. Their investment operations should not be used as a reference but rather viewed as contrary indicators, such as a16z (a well-known Web2 capital institution that previously created a partial bull market from 2021 to the first half of 2022 through Web3 narratives, with an investment style characterized by flooding the market and placing great emphasis on the KOL-like CX capabilities of asset management personnel, where returns largely depend on luck or probability); Yzi labs (formerly Binance Labs, where CZ himself admitted that 80% of investments are losing money, which is a crucial part of the Binance system, and I believe its success rate does not match its industry status).
Another indicator to judge whether a project or product is reliable is its official website. If it is a shell or has a very rough UI, it is better to extinguish the thought of sending money to scammers for charity early on, and do not donate to high-risk potential rug projects, just like the previous ZKasino.
A new bull market or cycle will definitely come, and the dealers at that time will likely choose to speculate on new rather than old. Existing "old coins" represented by AI agent concept tokens are likely to only expect loss-cutting rebounds, making it difficult to achieve profit-taking rebounds; one should judge the selling position at their discretion.
With the emergence of AI, the importance of applications has been infinitely elevated, as technology is no longer a shackle that traps countless crypto projects but rather a tool that allows many to achieve "what you think is what you get." Regardless of the product, it ultimately needs to leverage applications to reach a broader audience, so pay attention to popular applications in the traditional AI field, as they may harbor opportunities for another explosive growth in the cryptocurrency industry.
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