👂The Crypto Disciplinary Era Begins: 13 Reference Suggestions to Consider
Navigating the complex market to find the next bull run 🐮.
Overnight, the momentum has shifted from bearish to bullish.
With Trump's renewed pronouncements, the US stock market and crypto market, which had experienced trillions of dollars in declines, have begun their price recovery journey. 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 ambivalent stance and flip-flopping rhetoric—jumping up and down and performing tricks based on a single person or piece of news.
In light of this, I will briefly outline my personal perspective on the current market phase and the subsequent breakthrough direction of the cryptocurrency industry for discussion and exchange with readers. Note: Some of the content in this article was inspired by Azuma (@azuma_eth), a writer for Odaily Planet Daily. I would like to express my gratitude here.
The Beginning of the Crypto Disciplinary Era: Trump Takes Office After US Debt Exceeds $36T
1. In February 2024, the total US federal government debt increased to $34.4T. As of March 6, 2025, this number has increased to $36.56T. Compared to $35.8T in January 2025, it has increased by $760B in just a few months.
Many people may not have a clear concept of this number, but using the total market cap of the cryptocurrency industry as a comparison will provide a more intuitive understanding—as of the time of writing, according to data from Coingecko @coingecko, the total market cap of the cryptocurrency industry is approximately $2.7T. In other words, the current US debt is approximately 13.5 times the total market cap of cryptocurrencies.
Such a massive national debt is a key focus for Trump's second term, in addition to economic development, international relations, and political hegemony.
Under the efforts of Trump himself, whose brain is dominated by a businessman's mindset, and his "internet celebrity government team," although the cryptocurrency industry has entered a period of friendly regulation, it has inevitably entered a "disciplinary era"—that is, it must face and accept US President Trump's "butterfly effect" strongman politics on the crypto market and even the global economy.
This is also the expected outcome after the political celebrity meme coin craze initiated by Trump's official #Meme coin $TRUMP.
Every crypto player must switch their trading operations more frequently, not trying to fully understand Trump's thinking, but grasping the impact of statements, news, and information on market trends.
2. Based on the logic of the continued existence of US debt, the only proven effective base for #RWA (Real World Assets) and so-called RWAFi is US debt.
The fixed income support behind it mainly benefits from the current dollar-denominated system of the cryptocurrency market and the guarantee of the political and military power of the US authoritarian government.
3. In such a volatile and changeable market, a way of thinking that crypto players must master is the ripple effect thinking path. Treat an event as an inducing factor that will spread like a stone thrown into the water, and the corresponding people/assets/markets/tokens/projects/ecosystems will be affected by the transmission of the gradually spreading water ripples. The decentralized trust crisis that Hyperliquid encountered due to the JELLYJELLY short order event is also a very intuitive case experience. To achieve this, crypto players need to develop good thinking habits and information sensitivity. My personal suggestion is to draw more circle diagrams, which is very helpful for improving transmission-style thinking.
The Invisible Replacement of Crypto Protagonists: The Shift from #VC to #KOL, Liquidity Attention is More Important
4. Compared to previous cycles, this bull market cycle that started in 2023 has been more thoroughly disenchanted with VC institutions. But for now, there is no straightforward good or bad to this trend.
The reason is that in the crypto cycle dominated by VCs, VC institutions have the ability to create momentum and can quickly "mature" one or several mainstream concepts in the short term through funding, narratives, and other means, thereby concentrating the main liquidity in the crypto industry and quickly realizing the entire life cycle of the project from "start-up-operation growth-TGE token issuance-secondary circulation." At that time, the final destination of many projects was still CEX exchanges.
After the VC deals with "high FDV and low circulation" were gradually replaced by so-called "Fair Launch" inscriptions, community deals, and Meme coins, market attention was further diluted and fragmented. KOLs (broadly defined as anyone who can influence short-term market sentiment and market user attention) have become the distribution center of market attention and market liquidity. At this time, the crypto market no longer has the patience of "sharpening a sword for several years." Countless people have returned to the chain and started a passionate PVP game. This is why the so-called "KOL crypto cycle" is pouring more and more into deals, and on-chain front-running is getting faster and faster. Because after the launch of Bitcoin ETFs and Ethereum ETFs, the incremental funds are extremely limited, and the existing funds can only carry out zero-sum games. The market is a bloody game of who runs faster. Everyone is afraid of becoming the last bagholder. Because this means that the result of maximizing losses is borne by oneself.
Therefore, what everyone knows is that the crypto market entering 2025, especially after TRUMP, MELANIA, LIBRA and other notorious Meme coins carried out an unprecedented series of harvesting of new entrants, the crypto crowd is now playing a game of musical chairs.
5. In view of this, most people have to accept the rules of the game that the market has subtly established—stop losses in time, don't hold for long, and the ultimate trading goal is still BTC or to deposit the principal in the exchange.
6. From the perspective of new entrants, the Solana @solana ecosystem is currently more attractive. Although this attraction will shift with the emergence of wealth-creating effects, the Ethereum ecosystem and other #EVM ecosystems are becoming increasingly weak in attracting new entrants. Including the Base ecosystem, which has been shouting "mass consumer adoption," it is difficult to hide its decline, with https://t.co/XLMlcGRlJp close to being shut down, Farcaster struggling to grow after high financing, the Meme coin ecosystem being small-scale, and the entire ecosystem highly dependent on transaction volume to survive.
For more information about new entrants to the Ethereum mainnet ecosystem, see "Ethereum Enters a 'Mid-Life Crisis': An Analysis of Development Performance from a Data Perspective."
Potential Engines Leading the Next Bull Market: Medium-Return Yield Products
7. Based on the above situation, with the increasing connection between cryptocurrencies and the US stock market and the US economy, and the cryptocurrency coverage gradually approaching the global peak, the mainstream entry of cryptocurrencies has reached the halfway point to some extent. Although the total market cap of cryptocurrencies is still below $3T, it is undeniable that asset management institutions and giants that manage hundreds of billions or even larger amounts of funds have already set their sights on the cryptocurrency market.
In terms of risk appetite and investment objectives, unlike market retail investors with smaller amounts of funds or those who are gambling for high-multiple, high-risk returns, institutional large-volume funds may prefer stablecoin yield-generating products. Relevant decision-makers are more willing to use derivative stablecoins to exchange for anti-inflation or value-added returns. This is also an important reason why PayFi, DeFi restaking, and the RWA track have received more attention and even bets from institutions in this cycle.
For many institutions, they need to find a balance between the deposit interest of traditional finance and the high returns of cryptocurrencies—above the 2%-3% interest rate of regular deposits, but below the yield of crypto projects that often start at 20%. I personally believe that 6%-12% may be a relatively appropriate yield range (for example, the $USDC deposit interest rate opened by Coinbase @coinbase is up to 12%).
8. For ordinary retail investors, since they do not have large amounts of funds, they can participate in similar on-chain projects or crypto lending platforms through the idea of "interaction farming," that is, diversifying positions, hedging risks, liquidity mining, and regularly "harvesting" (generally recommended every 1-2 weeks). On the premise of ensuring the safety of the principal, they can obtain more returns by obtaining platform points or airdrop rewards.
Of course, the premise for doing this is that unreliable products and unreliable investment teams are absolutely not to be played with.
9. As for specific products, you can screen related projects on the Solana @solana ecosystem, #ETH ecosystem, and $Sui ecosystem, and strike a corresponding balance between being little-known and having considerable returns.
Be a Sober Person in a Mixed Market: Identify People and Institutions Worth Following
10. For most people in the market, including you and me, following strategies is still the best choice. In this regard, Azuma recommends the following specific list of individuals and institutions:
Coinbase @coinbase CEO Brian Amstrong @brian_armstrong;
BitMEX @BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes @CryptoHayes;
Trader Eugene (co-founder of Tangent Capital);
Multicoin Capital @multicoincap (Solana @solana ecosystem depth-bound players, mainly refer to its non-Solana ecosystem investment or shouting orders);
Polychain @polychain; Dragonfly @dragonfly_xyz; Pentera @penterasec (#BTC ultra-early buying capital institutions) and Coinbase Ventures @cbventures.
In addition, I personally believe that the investments of some institutions are illogical and belong to the type of broad-based investment, and they have previously enjoyed the convenience of the trend or ecological niche. Their investment operations should not only not be used as a reference, but should be regarded as a counter-indicator, such as a16z (a well-known Web2 capital institution that previously used the Web3 narrative to create a local bull market in H1 2021-2022. Its investment style belongs to large-scale flooding and attaches great importance to the KOL-style CX ability of asset management personnel. The rate of return mainly depends on luck or probability); Yzi labs (formerly Binance Labs, CZ himself previously admitted that 80% of the investments were losing money. It should be noted that this is an important part of the Binance system. Personally, I believe that its success rate does not match its industry status).
11. Another indicator to judge whether a project or product is reliable is its official website. If it is a shell or the UI is extremely rough, it is better to extinguish the idea of giving money to scammers for charity as soon as possible. Do not donate to potentially high-risk #Rug projects for nothing, just like ZKasino did.
12. A new bull market or cycle will definitely come, and the market makers at that time will most likely choose to speculate on the new rather than the old. The existing "old coins" represented by AI agent concept tokens are likely to only expect a stop-loss rebound, and it is difficult to reach the level of a take-profit rebound. You can judge the selling position yourself.
13. After the emergence of AI, the importance of applications has been infinitely elevated, because technology is no longer the shackle that traps countless crypto projects, but a tool that allows many people to realize "what you think is what you get." No matter what the product is, it ultimately needs to use applications to reach a wider range of people. Pay attention to popular applications in the traditional AI field, which may contain opportunities for another major outbreak in the cryptocurrency industry.
Multis
Paper
Mad Realities
Pahdo Labs