TOKEN2049 Reflection: New users are flooding in with approaches that industry insiders can't even comprehend
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TOKEN2049 Reflection: New users are flooding in with approaches that industry insiders can't even comprehend
The biggest bottleneck in the crypto industry is not the product, but people.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsWritten by: VedaCrypto
This year I barely attended any conferences—except Breakpoint—all the rest were private gatherings. Below is my conference recap.
1. The Bear Winter Is Coming for Tier-1 Institutions
Almost every tier-1 institution I spoke with gave negative feedback, some even going as far as declaring "tier-1 is dead." Nearly all have large piles of SAFTs on their books—either without TGE or already TGE'd but still locked (with prices looking extremely ugly). Several OTC firms mentioned struggling to find buyers for many deals.
As for raising new funds—a cyclical necessity—most are seeing severe contractions. A fund publicly claiming $100M might only have $10M actually committed, with the rest just soft pledges. Compared to the last cycle where raising $500M or $1B was easy, now they're forced to deploy larger checks per deal, inevitably inflating valuations and creating one "doomed" project after another. But this time, there's no SBF to carry the madness forward. So instead, a few so-called "top-tier funds" will have to die first.
Additionally, nearly every tier-1 firm says they want to move into project incubation. But frankly, their team structures and GPs lack any real incubation capabilities—many don’t even have experience taking a single project from 0 to launch. So how exactly do they plan to incubate?
2. Everyone Pretends to Care About "Real-World Use Cases"
Every institution that pulled me aside at the event asked what sectors I’m watching lately (though everyone’s secretly just chasing deals). When I flipped the question back, many replied with buzzwords like “projects with real revenue, real users, real-world applications,” followed by a robotic recital of RWA, AI, DePIN, etc.—as if these terms actually mean anything concrete. We all know the truth: these phrases are just placeholders to feign research activity when there’s genuinely nothing substantial to build a thesis around.
We’ve known since 2022 that trying to fill Web3’s narrative void with real-world Web2 use cases doesn’t work. Look at Binance listings from the last cycle—today, the worst performers are precisely those “use case” projects. It’s not that crypto shouldn’t innovate here, but these ideas are disconnected from crypto’s true positive externality: asset liquidity.
The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
3. New Users Are Flooding In—In Ways Insiders Can't Understand
At events, institutions and project teams often open with lines like: “This cycle has no new users or fresh capital coming in—so what should we do to attract them?”
Meanwhile, @IGGYAZALEA threw the most outrageous yet brilliant party in crypto history—edgy, authentically crypto-native, capturing mainstream attention (unlike Zuckerberg’s sister saying “We Gonna Make It,” which was clearly a top signal).
Everyone agrees @Solana’s Breakpoint was the best public chain ecosystem conference in years—essentially crypto’s Burning Man. But why was BP so powerful?
I think people missed this: KOLs like @SolJakey, @solanasteve_, @chooserich continuously producing video content around Breakpoint; outside Solana, @redactedcoin, @doginhood_io (the one who smuggled 20,000 condoms), and Professor Crypto—who won “Best KOL Award”—are covering crypto in ways never seen before.
This is Gen Alpha TikTok-era culture in full effect. Many Solana projects or Cabals are run by people under 20—and this is something old-school insiders simply can’t comprehend.
New users are entering at unprecedented speed and in completely novel ways, yet most people remain blind to it. Soon, the entire logic of project narratives, operations, and dissemination in crypto will undergo fundamental transformation.
Summary
History’s greatest lesson is that humanity never learns from history. No offense intended, but judging from this year’s 2049 event and post-conference summaries, this still holds true in crypto.
Whenever the industry hits difficulty, we reflexively chant empty slogans: “real yield, real users, real use cases,” and “bring in traditional capital.” But history shows these industrial-era relics are merely tourists in the crypto world. At best, they’ll come in to do carry trades—but they won’t change anything. Without starting from crypto-native principles, so-called “real use cases” are just exotic attempts to replicate financial functions fiat solved decades ago.
Crypto’s biggest bottleneck isn’t products—it’s people. Human thinking patterns and learning capacity are limited and fixed. Therefore, the way audiences understand and perceive crypto within any given period determines how they enter—and ultimately serve as exit liquidity. This is the sole factor shaping what crypto becomes.
In plain terms: the old generation is too dumb to use new things. They must die off before the next generation takes over.
You can’t find a new continent using old maps (unless you’re stupid enough like Columbus).
What exactly went wrong? Why are so many of our industry’s brightest still unable to learn from history and realize the future is already here?
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