Cold Reflections in the Post-Bull Market Era: How Will Different Sectors in the Cryptocurrency Industry Evolve Amid Market Consolidation?
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Cold Reflections in the Post-Bull Market Era: How Will Different Sectors in the Cryptocurrency Industry Evolve Amid Market Consolidation?
The author analyzes the current structural changes in the cryptocurrency market from 16 dimensions.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Joel John
Translation: Yangz, Techub News
Translator's note: Against the backdrop of fluctuating Trump-era tariff policies and turbulent global trade dynamics, the cryptocurrency market is undergoing a significant cooldown. In this article, the author analyzes structural shifts in today’s crypto markets across 16 dimensions. At this unique juncture where macro policy and market mechanics intersect, the crypto industry may be on the verge of a profound value reconstruction—a brutal shakeout, yet also an inevitable step toward maturity.
These are my overarching thoughts on the current state of the cryptocurrency market—or rather, how I believe it will evolve.
1. The essence of cryptocurrency lies in the trajectory of money itself. Blockchain does for money/assets what the internet did for information. As a result, speculation remains the dominant application within the space.
While the speed and scale of speculative activity may fluctuate, the most significant outcomes (and primary revenue sources) in this field will continue to stem from speculation and its secondary use cases—lending, derivatives, broker-dealers, and so on.
2. With Circle filing for an initial public offering (IPO), the stablecoin sector may be approaching its peak moment. In my view, interest rate cuts will act as another domino tipping this space. Given channel moats and regulatory hurdles, the next major opportunity in stablecoins may not be as explosive. (Recommended reading: "Techub Earnings Deep Dive: Circle’s IPO Push Amid Revenue Growth and Profitability Challenges")
For founders not based in Silicon Valley, real marginal opportunities lie in regional fintech applications leveraging crypto payment rails—not in “exporting” USD. Of course, if you can raise over $10 million upfront and base your headquarters in the U.S., that changes the equation.
3. In theory, DePIN should be red-hot. But considering service-level agreements (SLAs) and the scale demands of large AI projects, genuine investment opportunities will center on networks generating over $100 million in demand-side revenue. Such networks almost always partner with private equity or hedge funds to meet short-term liquidity needs. To date, I haven’t seen any token-based network scale to this level while maintaining reliable operations.
The good news: networks capable of reaching such scale do exist. The bad news: most of their revenue never flows into the token economy.
4. Our growing focus on the relationship between tokens and revenue stems from two fundamental shifts. First, in a post-pump.fun world, tokens no longer enjoy automatic valuation premiums. Maintaining a fully diluted valuation (FDV) above $100 million becomes extremely difficult once assets vest. Second, traditional stock and forex markets now exhibit volatility on par with crypto—but with clearer trends—draining marginal buying power from the crypto market entirely.
The real reason projects now worry about revenue? For liquidity funds (the last marginal buyers), only around 50 revenue-generating tokens are worth allocating to—and fewer than 30 of those show meaningful growth potential.
5. Venture capital firms have strong incentives to insist that “tokens as a business model aren’t dead” and to keep pushing the narrative of “Web3 coming soon.” If you choose to ignore industry trends, you can stay in denial for a while longer.
In my view, we’re entering a phase where fewer founders will issue tokens, instead opting to hold earnings within small teams. Crypto VCs may struggle with this shift, as their traditional liquidity has relied on exchange listings and retail buying. Some blame reduced crypto VC deployment on macro conditions, but the deeper truth is that, in the years since FTX, portfolios’ ability to generate returns has significantly eroded amid changing market dynamics.
6. In my opinion, fewer than 10 crypto funds have the capacity to write checks and build companies at the Uber/Cisco level. Even fewer—fewer than 30 partners—truly understand how to achieve such outcomes. People often claim the lack of major consumer apps in crypto stems from poor UX or weak marketing. But part of the core challenge lies in the nature of capital itself: constrained by 3-year return cycles and addicted to the liquidity rush from token listings. This has become crypto VCs’ opium. Ironically, within this environment may lie an opportunity—to build scaled consumer applications with a longer-term vision.
7. The intersection of crypto and artificial intelligence (Crypto x AI) appears trendy but struggles to keep pace with AI’s rapid evolution. This might be the first domain to expose our industry’s “emperor’s new clothes” phenomenon. Concepts like data provenance and distributed compute allocation sound compelling in theory, but their scalability remains unproven. Most networks that have achieved scale still rely on distributed data centers paid in USD.
AI models don’t demonstrate premium performance simply because data sources are compensated. The area with real potential—one analogous to P2E—is crowdsourced IP addressing. I believe this niche deserves close attention.
8. There’s an opportunity to build native digital banks for middle-to-high-income individuals in crypto. Imagine a platform handling payroll, fund transfers, portfolio construction (stocks/T-bills), and lending—all tailored for crypto-native users. We’re talking about people earning between $5,000 and $200,000 monthly in crypto who want a bank to manage all these services. While the total addressable market (TAM) may only reach 5,000 to 10,000 users, building such a platform holds unique value in my view.
9. Farcaster could revive DAOs. Many DAOs failed because people simply didn’t want to govern lending or derivatives platforms. If Farcaster communities grow to tens of thousands and can coordinate resources on-chain (e.g., community-owned assets), DAOs may regain relevance.
I hope this becomes the path for Memecoins’ resurgence. Done right, such assets could prove more sustainable than Doge or Shiba Inu. Farcaster’s core challenge lies in balancing creators’ needs against platform financialization. Without financialization, it risks becoming just another protocol; with successful financialization, it could become the blueprint for the next internet.
10. Today’s blockchain gaming scene feels stagnant, yet from a return-on-investment perspective, it’s currently the highest-performing segment among consumer apps. Teams still working in this space need a certain “madness,” but the truly capable builders may create sustainable game economies with millions of users. Many assume this sector died after Axie in 2022, but accounting for one year of cooling-off post-hype and over two years of product development, 2025–2026 could mark the breakout year for crypto gaming.
11. Long-tail altcoins will struggle to make a comeback. Unlike in 2018 and 2023—when retail participation was lacking—retail investors are still active today, but they no longer chase the 50th identical token.
This shift, in my view, changes crypto investment logic. The old bet was “Will this token get listed?” Now it’s “Does this token matter?” These are fundamentally different questions—and few know how to answer them.
12. Talent drain in crypto will hit faster and harder than liquidity drought. Seeing professionals move to AI or leave due to slow progress deals a deeper blow to morale than falling prices. Unlike in 2018 and 2023, today’s macro outlook suggests prolonged pain, while AI continues exponential advancement.
In such a market, specific companies will evolve into beacons of hope. Corporate culture will ultimately become the moat. Yet very few founders recognize this shift.
13. Research and media organizations in crypto are undergoing consolidation. Ordinary creators have grown disillusioned—the main sponsors used to be L2 projects, and partnering with them is now painful. Over the next 18 months, creators can survive only through extreme financialization. Put differently, they must secure sufficient margins to afford the luxury of producing high-quality content.
Companies that successfully integrate creation (writing/research), financialization (asset/transaction design), and moats (distribution channels/processes) will thrive. But teams with this DNA are exceedingly rare.
14. If fewer founders issue tokens, while more achieve million-user growth, the next unlockable capital pool in crypto will be private equity. Though not yet substantial, PE firms could become dominant players within 18 months for companies with annual revenues exceeding $10 million. Around 50 such companies exist, perhaps 20 of them privately held. For now, it remains a small market.
15. I believe a $10 million fund could be established to back projects that combine creative content (music/art/writing) with crypto primitives and achieve scalable distribution. But this requires partners with aesthetic judgment, deep understanding of audience segmentation, and genuine resonance with creators. This is one of the areas I find most intriguing.
16. The crypto industry embodies both moral decay and idealism in shaping the world. Compared to 2018, we now have 100x better product-market fit (PMF), yet capture only a fraction of the previous valuation premiums. In such a market, filtering out academic noise and focusing on data signals has become an art—perhaps even a survival skill. Remember: you shape the world you're in, and are shaped by it in return. Subjective agency itself is the moat.
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