At the end of last year, when I was having dinner with friends I met during my travels, I was asked, Are there any interesting things happening in the cryptocurrency world right now?
I mentioned the trend of Bitcoin inscriptions in 2023, the approval of the US Bitcoin spot ETF, the Meme coin speculation frenzy on Solana, the historical high of Bitcoin, and so on.
After hearing this, my friend just smiled and shook his head, saying, Its almost there.
This friend of mine bought a lot of related concept assets during the time when celebrities were scrambling to buy or even issue NFTs themselves, when Facebook changed its name to Meta, and when various DAO organizations were all the rage, wanting to buy a copy of the US Constitution, an NBA team, or an island to build a utopia. He has not sold any of them to this day.
These narratives have become yesterday’s news in the eyes of the cryptocurrency community, and are even “scams”. So, for an “outsider” who just came to the cryptocurrency circle to experience it, I am very curious about how she views such views, and whether she thinks that these investments are failures?
Her answer was:
Of course not. Before I bought it, I had no knowledge of the cryptocurrency world and no interest in it, but NFT, Metaverse, DAO were the trends at the time, and I felt that if I didn’t participate in them, I would be out of date. I know that my NFT has fallen a lot since then, but I hardly care about it anymore, and I don’t think it’s a failed investment. Just like the Pentium computer my family bought for me when I was a child, who would say that buying a computer at that time was a failure just because the Pentium processor was gradually outdated?
I said that this example is not appropriate, because buying a computer is consumption, while buying NFTs and Metaverse Land is investment. She smiled and said that at least for her, NFTs and Metaverse Land are not investments, but consumption. Because investment is rational and is not driven by novel and fashionable emotional factors, and investment cannot bring novel and fashionable feelings.
Blockchain belongs to young people, Web3 belongs to young people. We can use it to change the world, or create a world of our own. But now, the cryptocurrency world is rapidly losing such appeal.
Beliefs cannot make money, so the only thing left is the belief in making money.
The current cryptocurrency world is struggling with the myth and loss of “running out of ideas” and is sinking downward.
What can blockchain technology do? In the history of the cryptocurrency industry over the years, the emergence of new narratives has provided a continuous source of power for the development of the industry, allowing the market dream rate of cryptocurrency to be maintained. From the legendary story of spontaneously establishing the value of a new generation of currency, such as 10,000 bitcoins to buy 2 pizzas, to the Ethereum ICO craze that turned the blockchain into a new, decentralized asset issuance and financing platform, to DeFi (decentralized finance) upgrading the blockchain to a bank that can lend, support leverage and other financial operations, to the emergence of consumer-level applications such as NFT, Metaverse, and games.
Blockchain can change the world, and cryptocurrency can change the world. As long as you hold such a belief, stay in this circle and be curious about all new technological innovations, you will eventually wait for your opportunity and reap your own rewards. In the past, many young people were attracted by the vigor and vitality of cryptocurrency, plunged into the cryptocurrency wave and became the brave trendsetters of the era, changing their lives in the wonderful cryptocurrency journey.
From the end of 2021 to 2022, celebrities from all over the world rushed to buy or even issue NFTs themselves. Facebook changed its name to Meta, and various DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations) that wanted to buy a copy of the US Constitution, an NBA team, and an island to build a utopia emerged like mushrooms after a rain. That was the golden age of blockchain, or Web3 in my mind. In 2022, there was a very lively and literary Web3 street meeting in Dali. The preparatory group also expanded from two or three people in the local youth community to thirty or forty people, and finally nearly 100 people, completing the power generation with love in a very decentralized way.
Also in 2022, the Jiaohai pub, which later received tens of millions of yuan in angel round financing, received more attention because of its unique Web3 feature. Liang You, the owner of this pub, said in an interview at the time that he was not a member of the Web3 circle, but the organizational structure of the Jiaohai pub adopted the DAO model from Web3, and also issued the first domestic co-branded beer with Bored Ape.
Twitter is the most active social media in the cryptocurrency circle. In the past, you could see all kinds of crypto industry analysis and industry outlook, sharing or debating opinions on different development directions of the industry. Nowadays, such content has lost its market and has become rare. Instead, it is the name of the dog raised by Binance founder CZ, the sharing of success studies of various coin gods, and even discussions about female college students and business K.
Such changes are a direct reflection of the broken heart of the cryptocurrency circle after it fell into the myth of value innovation. When the US government became more and more friendly to cryptocurrencies, the cryptocurrency circle was naturally happy, but it was also more worried and uneasy that this is the last round of bull market. At the beginning, for the decline of various narrative assets such as NFT digital luxury goods or Metaverse land digital real estate speculation dream, the cryptocurrency circle would blame the project parties for not doing well enough. Gradually, they stopped scolding and became indifferent, sneering at various narratives.
In such disillusionment, exchanges, market makers and KOLs have become the most powerful presence in the cryptocurrency circle. If a coin can be listed on an exchange, it means that there are enough users who do not trade on the blockchain to participate. If there is a market maker behind a coin, it means that there is money organizing a game and can artificially create price trends to make the game lively. In the cryptocurrency circle, these organizing funds are often conspiracy groups. If a coin has KOLs involved, it means that KOLs also have to cheer for their own positions. The most powerful KOLs are called heads. Even if they do not directly post on Twitter to promote, there will be people who follow their on-chain behavior to buy.
Not long ago, at the Consensus 2025 conference that just ended in Hong Kong, many people in the cryptocurrency circle laughed at themselves, saying that although the conference was called the Consensus Conference, it seemed that the people who came to seek consensus did not find a consensus. During the conference, project owners were still able to spend a lot of money, renting a variety of high-end venues to hold exquisite events, and even spending 600,000 Hong Kong dollars on drinks in one night.
But the carnival cannot eliminate the confusion and anxiety of the cryptocurrency world about where are we going. In the cryptocurrency world, there is no fairy tale that belief can bring benefits, only the belief in making money remains.
The “NASDAQ” of the cryptocurrency world, the original sin of “crypto’s second religion”
When the cryptocurrency world began to subconsciously compare it to a decentralized Nasdaq, cracks in cryptocurrency, the worlds largest cyber religion, began to emerge.
Different people interpret the value of cryptocurrency from different perspectives, most of which may be from the perspective of finance. But in my opinion, the value of cryptocurrency has always been the value of belief, the value of cyber religion.
From buying 2 pizzas with 10,000 bitcoins, to becoming a darknet hard currency, to becoming the legal tender of El Salvador, to the establishment of a strategic bitcoin reserve in the United States. One great achievement after another cannot be planned or predicted. It is the belief of people around the world in Bitcoin that has allowed this cyber religion to go through a magnificent 16 years. If no one believed from the bottom of their hearts that Bitcoin would become the world currency in the future, if no one believed that Satoshi Nakamoto would never touch the approximately 1 million bitcoins he/she owns, Bitcoin would never have been able to develop steadily to this day.
The NASDAQ of the cryptocurrency world began with the birth of Ethereum. This was actually the first split of the cyber religion and the formal formation of the Second Crypto Religion. Bitcoin fundamentalists stick to the positioning of currency and do not want Bitcoin, the blockchain, to pursue being able to do more and sacrifice even a little bit of security, stability, and even decentralized characteristics. Bitcoin believers believe in the value of Bitcoin itself, while Ethereum believers believe that they can and should create more value.
Bitcoin is gold, Ethereum is silver. Through ICO, DeFi, NFT, Metaverse, blockchain games and other new blockchain technology attempts, Ethereum has reached the peak and finally achieved such a status in the hearts of people in the cryptocurrency circle. Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin was also in his heyday at that time and became the second God in the cryptocurrency circle after Satoshi Nakamoto.
But in fact, the Second Crypto Religion has been very unstable since the beginning, because no matter whether it is gold or silver, the world does not need these two precious metals to hand in their answers to what they can do to prove their own value. From this point of view, Bitcoin is completely comparable to gold, but Ethereum cannot be compared with silver. Because since the birth of Ethereum, Ethereum has been on the road of constantly undergoing value verification, just like our helpless life, which always needs to hand in answers.
Rather than saying that Vitalik Buterin is a god, it is better to say that he is more like the Steve Jobs of the cryptocurrency circle. Now, his situation seems to be in a stage that echoes that of Jobs in his early years. In 1985, Apple encountered a decline in competition from IBM. Due to differences in ideas with most of the management, Jobs was kicked out of the Apple board of directors. Nearly 20 years later, Ethereum encountered a decline in competition from Solana. When Vitalik Buterin expressed that he would not actively contact the government to seek recruitment as a benefit, he also changed from V God to V Dog.
On the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter, many games have gone through a long time from completing fundraising to final development and delivery. Shenmue 3 has been more than 4 years, and Star Citizen has been in the Alpha testing stage for more than 12 years. But in the cryptocurrency market with strong speculative properties, Vitalik Buterin cannot get such long-term patience from the market.
But in fact, whether the various new blockchain technology explorations that have taken place on Ethereum can get off the ground and whether they are useful or not requires the right time, right place and right people. Take NFT as an example. It took about 4 years from the birth of CryptoPunks to the explosion of NFT. If NFT has enabled blockchain technology to find the application direction of new art medium, computer vision (art) that creates art through computer algorithms has originated since the 1950s. It was not until about 70 years later that blockchain technology was found to make this art category unique and traceable, and it also found a perfect form of presentation - after all, if the images generated by computer algorithms are just printed out with a printer, their charm is bound to be greatly reduced.
Why did the cryptocurrency community lose patience this time?
Real bull market or fake bull market?
Because Bitcoin reached an all-time high last year.
In the cryptocurrency world, the term carving a boat to find a sword is used to refer to past experience of price increases in order to capture the next big market. One of the iron laws of carving a boat to find a sword is that the halving of Bitcoin every four years will start a big market. Bitcoin will rise and hit a record high, while trading sideways at a high level. Altcoins led by Ethereum will become the protagonists of the second half of the bull market. Various new blockchain technology narratives will bring one after another wealth myths with tens or hundreds of times of returns.
When Bitcoin hit a record high again last year, the cryptocurrency community still believed in this iron law. Unlike previous bull markets, this time, the cryptocurrency community is more anxious. Such anxiety still comes from the loss of faith - even the US government has come in to take over, and there will be fewer and fewer opportunities for retail investors in the future.
For most people in the cryptocurrency circle, Bitcoin’s record high does not bring direct benefits, because Bitcoin is too large and it is difficult to achieve financial freedom quickly by investing in Bitcoin. What everyone hopes for is the “altcoin” craze after Bitcoin’s record high.
This time, the objective conditions for replicating the altcoin craze do not exist. First, the funds used to purchase Bitcoin spot ETFs are actually active in the traditional financial market, and do not directly enter the chain to participate in DeFi, NFT, metaverse and other on-chain activities as in the past. Secondly, there is really no new crypto-native narrative within the currency circle that can refresh and unite people, let alone attract the attention and participation of people outside the circle.
But, after three years of waiting, is this the result? The cryptocurrency community is unwilling to accept this, and the consensus of unwillingness has formed a false bull market. People in the circle call this market situation PvP - in the last bull market, everyone shared the common passion and vision for the new narrative and spread it to the outside world. The concept of Web3 has even spread to some non-blockchain industries. But this time, everyone has no consensus on the new narrative, and just wants to be a smart guy and win from the other partys losses.
This is very similar to the ending of Alice in Borderland - one difficult survival game after another is actually an illusion created by the last surviving thoughts of dying people who have suffered from the disaster of meteorite impact.
For cyber religion, this is a very bad situation, which releases a very dangerous sign - the cryptocurrency circle, in confusion and loss, and in the anxiety of making money, has taken off the cloak of idealism and sacredness of the cryptocurrency circle with its own hands.
Pessimistic honesty is actually helpless self-humiliation
The cryptocurrency community began to call it a big casino.
Last year, I met a friend who I had known for a long time offline and specialized in meme coins. Meme coins were the beginning of his entry into the cryptocurrency market, and it was almost the only track he was interested in in the cryptocurrency market.
“I just think this stuff is fun, and it’s something that young people of our generation play with. Meme coins, or if you remove the word coin, this kind of thing is wild and unrealistic, and it’s not well understood in reality, but in the cryptocurrency market, everyone recognizes this thing, this culture. When I found that my sense of smell or aesthetics for these contents could make money, I thought meme coins were really cool and fun.”
After he finished speaking, I drank a glass of wine with him. As the alcohol spread through my body, my mind quickly flashed those meme coins that once made me excited, such as $DOGE, which was derived from the world-famous Shiba Inu meme and was repeatedly mentioned by Musk, and $PEOPLE, which was used to buy a copy of the US Constitution...
But now, interesting, the golden key of the meme coin, has almost lost its function. Put aside everything, close your eyes, and only one word remains:
bet
Solana, the most popular crypto casino in this round of fake bull market, has seen more than 640,000 meme coins appear since April 1 last year, and this is only the data as of early July last year. In other words, in 3 months, an average of more than 7,000 new meme coins appeared on Solana every day.
The disappearance of cyber religious believers corresponds to the emergence of crypto gamblers. Crypto gamblers send a series of addresses composed of English and numbers on various chat software every day. This is abbreviated as CA, which means the contract address of the token in Chinese. With this address, the token that needs to be traded can be accurately located.
Smart money and dev are the success or failure factors that crypto gamblers care about most. Smart money is equivalent to crypto gamblers. These addresses on the blockchain are sought after because of their high winning rate in daily transactions. Their trading actions will cause many crypto gamblers to follow and buy. Dev is the abbreviation of developer, and these people are the creators of tokens. Crypto gamblers need a relatively reliable gambling initiator and try to avoid participating in gambling initiated by token creators who have a criminal record of selling a large number of tokens at the beginning.
Objectively speaking, the narrative that created the most wealth stories in this round of fake bull market is the crypto casino narrative. However, this should have been just a helpless honesty of the status quo, but in the end it turned into a numb self-righteousness.
This is the most serious challenge that the cyber religion of cryptocurrency has suffered so far - when cracks appear in the ideals and sanctity of an industry, no one knows when and how these cracks will be repaired.
Can this rift actually be repaired?
Cryptocurrency consensus is not unbreakable, it needs to continue to grow
The greatest value of the new narrative of the cryptocurrency world created by the innovative attempts of blockchain technology is that it allows cyber religion to appear in front of the world in a more diversified image, allowing more people to become interested in and gain a deeper understanding of cryptocurrencies through different channels. In the past, this was a positive cycle with the growth of cryptocurrency prices, but now it has become decoupled.
The price growth of cryptocurrencies is more about strengthening the faith of existing believers. The amazing wealth stories created by cryptocurrencies do not directly help the missionary work of cryptocurrencies.
Does the cryptocurrency world need a new narrative? Yes. Is it urgent? No. The world is constantly developing, and technological progress will bring a constant stream of new demands. It is very likely that next year, or even tomorrow, the answer to the question What else can blockchain do? will automatically emerge. Even if there is no answer, is the original narrative good enough? No, it can still be done better, and we still need to continue exploring.
If cryptocurrency is just a casino and a paradise for speculators, then it has already started the countdown to its death. How the cryptocurrency industry views this industry determines how this industry will present itself to the world.
Young people of this generation may still think that cryptocurrency is cool, but what about the next generation and the next generation of young people? How will they view cryptocurrency?
I dont know, my friend, the answer is blowing in the wind.
