When 00s who entered the space in 2020 are called OGs, how can one stay ahead in the fast-evolving crypto industry?
TechFlow Selected TechFlow Selected
When 00s who entered the space in 2020 are called OGs, how can one stay ahead in the fast-evolving crypto industry?
Actually, keeping up with the growth pace of this industry doesn't require extraordinary decision-making. As long as you embrace common sense and accumulate first-hand experience, you won't be left behind.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor | Beichen
This article won't dive into the technical or business specifics of the crypto industry—instead, I’ll just vent a bit: Binance has already been around for six years!? Only six years since Binance was founded?!
These two completely opposite thoughts struck me simultaneously. After all, last year I already heard 00s who entered the space via NFTs in 2020 being called OGs... So 2017 must have been ancient history, and 2013 practically prehistoric.
Ten years—from 2013 to 2023—is an extremely short period in the context of technological or business history, yet this open-ended drama called “crypto” (or Web3, blockchain, coin圈) continues with endless entries and exits, playing out countless stories of gaining financial freedom (like becoming the richest person among Chinese communities) or losing everything (such as dying in Bali).
As someone who entered the crypto industry back in 2018, I’ve personally experienced or heard so many stories that I could easily write twelve full issues of "Story Collection." But instead, I’d like to skip the anecdotes and jump straight into reflections derived from them.
You can think of this as a five-year-in-the-making industry analysis model—one whose parameters are still being continuously refined.
On Industry Landscape
A few days ago, I did an interview with a Bilibili content creator. I said, “There aren’t many opportunities left for ordinary people in this era—but crypto still has some.” Not only because it’s still growing rapidly, but also because there are so many fools here.
I firmly believe crypto technology will reconstruct many things we dislike about the traditional internet world—and we’re only at the beginning. But what truly gives me courage is how my peers compare (and this is exactly why I don’t go into AI—they often lack even basic common sense).
Those lacking foundational knowledge about public blockchains place mystical faith in “high-performance public chains,” pinning their hopes on various “Ethereum killers.” In reality, these so-called killers merely issue tokens on high-performance distributed networks.
Those unfamiliar with application fundamentals obsess over “Web3 products with Web2 user experience,” when in fact their solution is simply slapping a token onto a Web2 product.
Those ignorant of market dynamics have blind confidence in “crypto having independent market movements,” explaining every price fluctuation solely through phrases like “whales pumping or dumping,” without understanding complex risk-return transmissions in financial markets.
So, if you want to make money in this clueless industry, it’s actually quite simple—just buy BTC and ETH, avoid unnecessary pitfalls, and ride the wave of rapid industry growth. Of course, achieving true financial freedom requires cognition, luck, and execution—and the latter two are largely determined by cognition itself.
Although we operate within the same industry, everyone's mental map of it differs drastically—most people randomly pick up fragments and mistake those pieces for the whole picture, leading inevitably to misjudgments.
An individual’s industry map usually forms at the intersection of when they entered crypto and which niche they started with, then evolves along that initial trajectory—which is why you can often guess someone’s entry year and sector just from their opinions.
Someone who entered in 2017 has a vastly different perception than someone who joined in 2020—and the gap between those entering via mining, NFTs, or DeFi might as well be described as “interdimensional.”
Thus, when we engage in dialogue (as we are now), we’re not standing on shared ground discussing the same topic—we’re each interpreting others’ partial knowledge through our own limited lens, making it easy to view one another as fools.
Yet this is precisely what makes the crypto industry exciting—different individuals occupy distinct ecological niches, striving to expand their survival space, forming a multidimensional competitive landscape of nested resources.
We’re all just placing bets based on our respective positions and cognitive maps. Time is the sole judge of fools. Until answers are revealed, all we can do is systematically expand and iteratively refine our industry maps.
On Industry Influence
The crypto industry continues to evolve rapidly, meaning its landscape cannot be analyzed like mature industries such as pork farming (where even an intern verifying data can derive reasonably accurate conclusions). The challenge lies in the unpredictability of future directions.
The ultimate direction of industry evolution is determined by utility (for example, AMM-based DEXs offer far greater utility than off-chain order-book-based centralized exchanges). But before clarity emerges, most industry bets are mere bandwagoning—following community leaders or capital trends—though followers often mistake this for independent thinking.
I don’t reject bandwagoning—it’s a valid way to profit. But success doesn’t come from accurately predicting utility; rather, it stems from deep insights into behavioral finance. You need to敏锐ly detect industry signals and follow accordingly—just ensure you’re not the last one holding the bag (airdropping is the lowest-cost form of bandwagoning).
The problem is many blindly trust the leader sheep without knowing whether they're heading toward lush pastures or slaughterhouses. They choose whom to follow based solely on perceived influence, and the only influence they perceive is hot money. Put plainly, they let hot money drag them around, unable to distinguish one type of hot money from another.
Tell me—does the speculative capital of a young man trading coins in a rental apartment, the pyramid-scheme-driven funds of a rural entrepreneur, freshly exited Web2 tech talent, and a16z’s venture capital all carry the same investment preferences? Do they genuinely bet on the right evolutionary path for crypto?
People without a proper industry map fail to recognize that behind hot money lie countless real individuals with vastly different motivations. To them, any hot money possesses “the power of capital,” so they blindly follow market noise.
This reflects a childlike anthropomorphic mindset—akin to ancient people using myths to explain natural phenomena beyond their comprehension. As Li Xiaolai puts it, “Even consensus among fools counts as consensus.” But if you want to profit from fools, you must first deeply empathize with them.
For instance, a Dubai billionaire and a tier-3 city Token Fund inherently possess completely unrelated industry maps and investment motives. If you refuse to look directly at both, you’ll never capture such capital flows.
My stance on hot money isn’t sour grapes—it’s emphasizing that this industry consists of diverse participants with varied goals. Their influx inevitably shapes industry trends (after all, not earning available money is foolish), but long-term direction will ultimately be decided by actual utility. Therefore, don’t be easily swayed by market hype (a prime example last year was Lang Xi rising to prominence—clear evidence of the industry’s fool density).
Over the past decade, very few individuals or institutions have survived more than two bull-bear cycles without being eliminated from crypto (how many remain today from those launched alongside Binance in 2017?). It’s tempting to think “I could replace them,” but that’s no justification to embrace every surge of hot money—historically, such hype rarely lasts beyond two or three months…
Hence, returning to building your industry cognition map remains essential—to differentiate between fleeting hot money and genuine utility.
On Industry Cycles
Failing to build an industry map is forgivable—perhaps you’re new and haven’t had time yet. But if you’re a seasoned veteran yet still can’t distinguish hot money from real value, that reflects mediocre cognition. Worse still is outright poor cognition—you don’t even recognize the existence of industry cycles.
This ignorance is precisely what fuels my motivation to stay in this space: as long as endless fools keep showing up, there will always be fresh opportunities. They continually pay tuition to the market, and these fees eventually flow—through unpredictable channels—to true builders, accelerating meaningful projects and driving industry progress.
Those unaware of industry cycles are like morning mushrooms oblivious to moon phases—you can’t discuss ice with summer insects. They repeatedly commit basic mistakes until the industry eliminates them. Yet before elimination, those lacking respect for cycles often feel superior, viewing cautious observers as conservative or outdated—“unable to keep up with crypto’s fast pace.”
I’ve seen countless fools insist crypto markets can move independently, ignoring external financial cycles and failing to grasp technological trends. Yet it’s precisely the resonance between external financial cycles and internal technological cycles that creates repeated bull and bear markets.
Two key factors determine crypto’s financial cycle: macro liquidity and Bitcoin halving—the latter coincidentally aligns with the former’s rhythm. Thus, focusing on macro liquidity suffices.
Macro liquidity itself is more complex than crypto. We don’t need bond or forex-level expertise, but we must uphold basic常识—at minimum, understand which phase of macro liquidity we’re currently in.
In this industry, you’ll often hear absurd takes like “Bitcoin ETF approval will bring a bull run” or “the Fed will cut rates soon” (e.g., during April’s Hong Kong Web3 Festival, a popular slogan floated: “No looking back”).
While externally driven financial cycles are relatively clear, internally driven technological cycles are much harder to predict. Still, reviewing the past decade reveals patterns.
Each technological cycle begins with a public chain breakout, followed by application-layer blossoming (though not necessarily fruitful outcomes). Public chains attract capital due to grand narratives; applications appeal to entrepreneurs and retail investors thanks to intuitive storytelling. Most are short-lived creations fueled by hot money. When macro liquidity contracts, chaos ensues. Truly viable technologies are those rebuilt according to crypto logic—components aligned with the industry’s historical trajectory.
How to intuitively grasp all this? Think of public chains as continents, and applications as buildings upon them.
Bitcoin was the first new continent on the crypto planet. Dissatisfied geeks flocked here. Later, some found it boring and explored new lands—some built sidechains nearby, others ventured further to create chains like Ethereum—then established settlements on these new continents.
Buildings on the crypto planet must be constructed using crypto-native logic—not copied from Web2. Starting from Bitcoin, we’ve been building from scratch, creating foundational public chains and basic application-layer protocols (few though they are)—and construction continues bottom-up.
Historically, any structure not reconstructed via crypto logic is destined to collapse like a house of cards, yet market attention always focuses on high-performance chains and application narratives—because these are easiest for outsiders to grasp.
So what happens in 2024 regarding industry cycles?
On Industry Opportunities
In 2013, the crypto industry’s only commercial needs were trading and mining—the earliest opportunities. Those who recognized and seized them included Pumpkin Zhang, Kao Mao, Xu Mingxing, and Li Lin.
Additionally, some technologists realized blockchain needed Turing-complete scripting languages (contrary to Satoshi’s original vision), leading to Bitcoin sidechains like RSK and Ethereum—technological drivers that enabled the next industry cycle (otherwise, the industry would merely repeat prior bull runs).
By 2017, as the industry grew tenfold, demand for trading and mining remained strong—still significant opportunities. While existing mining and exchange giants thrived, Zhao Changpeng also captured this moment.
Meanwhile, with Bitcoin sidechains and Ethereum supporting smarter scripts, early applications like NFTs, blockchain games, and DeFi emerged on these new continents. Looking back, only code-native DeFi truly matched the industry’s developmental stage.
Yet dissatisfaction with blockchain performance led to EOS (raising $400M publicly) and Filecoin (selling billions in storage miners)—new chains. Polkadot and Cosmos also emerged then, though their potential wouldn’t be proven until the next bull market.
In 2020, unprecedented macro liquidity flooded risk markets—including crypto.
As usual, hot money enriched trading and mining. But by then, these had become utilities—infrastructure dominated by pioneers. Only a few caught rare opportunities (roughly three types): mining on new chains and exiting timely (extremely difficult—most miners lost out), launching Wall Street-trusted exchanges (Coinbase, founded in 2012, finally surged ahead; newborn FTX rose to prominence), or establishing DEXs across major chains.
The real growth lies in public chains and applications. Ethereum received liquidity first, boasting top developers and rich underlying protocols (especially DeFi), naturally sparking the DeFi Summer.
But Ethereum’s capacity was limited. Excess liquidity spilled over. EOS, once highly anticipated, self-destructed. Polkadot and Cosmos weren’t ready yet. So capital rushed to Tron—a copycat Ethereum fork. The opportunity went to Sun Yuchen, who within months attempted to take over leading DeFi projects on Tron, scaring developers away.
Sun’s short-term greed handed the opportunity to BSC—a hastily made chain—that catapulted Zhao Changpeng to become the richest person in the Chinese-speaking world.
Unprecedented monetary easing prolonged this bull run. After DeFi, NFT collectibles, GameFi, SocialFi sequentially absorbed excess capital—until the Fed began hiking rates, abruptly ending the madness.
So what opportunities await in 2024?
Barring surprises, 2024 will mark the transition from contraction to expansion in macro liquidity (rate cuts may officially begin in 2025), drawing in a new wave of hot money.
Trading and mining will again enrich participants, but these fields seem closed to newcomers unless mining new chains with timely exit or entering more compliant trading spaces. However, this has little relevance to most current players—it involves resource coordination far exceeding existing crypto institutions. We’ll analyze RWA separately in a future piece.
Public chains deserve close attention—after all, technical progress has stagnated over the past two cycles since 2017. Now, cross-chain ecosystems like Polkadot and Cosmos are maturing, while ZK tech experiments spark imagination.
Also, last cycle’s junk chains (like Aptos, Sui) will surely pump and dump, just like GXB and IOST in 2020—unlike EOS, which uniquely chose to lie down and play dead.
One more note on ZK chains: many hyped “ZK chains” are merely “distributed networks with ZK verification plus a token”—possible but unnecessary. The real future lies in chains enabling advanced smart contracts via ZK (e.g., StareNet).
Regarding applications, every bull market sees masses blindly chasing Web2-like apps regardless of infrastructure readiness—so the 2017 “blockchain+” narrative will resurface as a hotspot in 2024.
But I’m extremely skeptical of all high-performance chains or apps built purely on Web2 logic—they have no reason to exist on blockchain. Take Helium: a project involving only order and data transactions could solve its needs with a ¥30,000 mini-program from Youzan. But fool consensus is still consensus—if it makes money, it’s not shameful. It’s a clear (though temporary) business opportunity.
As for building derivatives, social products, etc., using native crypto logic from the ground up, “Shrill Whistle” will continue tracking and analyzing developments.
Conclusion
In summary, whether founding startups or investing in crypto, strive to build your own industry analysis model across these three dimensions:
1. Expand your industry map. Everyone occupies their own niche and fights to grow. Your entry point is just a starting position—you must keep absorbing knowledge from new domains. Climbing steadily to level-eight technician in a state-owned enterprise may be optimal there, but it fails in the ever-changing crypto world.
2. Distinguish industry influence. Industry influence is like street vendors shouting prices. Without domain knowledge, you’ll easily follow the loudest voices. Bandwagoning can profit, but you must identify who’s behind each shout and understand their motives—or risk becoming the bagholder.
3. Understand industry cycles. Bull and bear markets emerge from the resonance between external financial cycles and internal technological cycles. Knowing what to do at each stage helps avoid the fate of most retail traders. First, never resist financial cycles. Second, trust crypto’s internal technological progression (we’re still rebuilding at the application protocol layer—don’t expect Web2-equivalent apps yet).
Once you’ve built your industry map, learned to parse influence, and developed respect for industry cycles, spotting opportunities becomes much easier. Whether positioning for emerging tech trends or riding waves of hot money, you’ll clearly understand your actions—no longer misled by market noise.
Finally, returning to the opening sentiment—“Binance has already been around for six years!?” “Binance has only been around for six years?!”. This era offers few chances for ordinary people—but crypto still does. For most entering, I believe it’s like left-behind children in Daliang Mountain choosing cage fighting—it’s one of the few remaining paths to change destiny.
Actually, keeping pace with this industry’s growth doesn’t require extraordinary decisions—just embracing common sense and accumulating firsthand experience ensures you won’t get left behind. “Shrill Whistle” itself is merely a pebble tossed to test the waters, hoping to journey with you through the turbulent chapters ahead.
Join TechFlow official community to stay tuned
Telegram:https://t.me/TechFlowDaily
X (Twitter):https://x.com/TechFlowPost
X (Twitter) EN:https://x.com/BlockFlow_News
