Author: TechFlow
" boring".
This is the recent evaluation of this cycle by many crypto market participants.
Primary investors find the primary market boring. They either think about how to explain to LPs that “the yield cannot beat Bitcoin”, or they are busy defending their rights and trying to recover some losses. After all, there is really nothing to invest in the primary market.
Secondary investors also feel bored. Apart from Bitcoin, Solana, and some MEME, they can’t find any good targets.
The project owners also feel bored. They always feel that their hard work in making products is like practicing the art of slaying dragons. They have some skills, but they can’t find the dragon. MEME is in vogue, and retail investors are disenchanted with VC coins. They really don’t know what to do to get the attention of retail investors.
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In summary, this is a pseudo-bull market lacking innovation, especially compared to 2020-2022, when all kinds of new concepts, new products, and new tracks such as DeFi/NFT/ Metaverse/Algorithmic Stablecoin/MEME... bloomed one after another. Every small innovation brought about the effect of widespread wealth, attracting a large number of newcomers (leeks) to enter the market. Even the major dollar fund grandfathers who once looked down on Crypto have changed their NFT avatars to Punk/Bored Ape, shouting "ALL IN CRYPTO"...
The heyday is gone. What caused the lack of innovation in this cycle, with only MEMEs running rampant?
As a writer, I am now worried about topic selection. Compared with the previous cycle, there is a lack of sexy topics, especially new character stories.
Biographical content has always been the password for traffic. Looking back to the past, the rise of this industry is the history of the rise of major legendary figures, such as Kaomao, Wu Jihan, Shenyu, CZ, He Yi, Xu Star Xu, Li Lin, Justin Sun, Da Hongfei, Vitalik, BM, Li Xiaolai, Bao Erye... They are all ruthless people. They may have started from grassroots, but they have all left their own marks and popular stories in the history of encryption, thus becoming the material for editors like me to cheat traffic.
In 2018, a certain media produced a poker card of cryptocurrency crypto.
In the last cycle, which coincided with the DeFi Summer, many heroes emerged, and a large number of "new crypto heroes" emerged: Musk, SBF, SuZhu, Andre Cronje, Stani Kulechov, Do Kwon, Anatoly Yakovenko, Barry Silbert, Kyle Samani... Each of them has his own legend, and each person represents a force behind him, like local princes, competing with each other and forming factions. Behind each faction are a large number of project assets, representing potential wealth opportunities.
What about this round of bull market?
Sry, we haven’t seen many new forces and new heroes. After FTX fell, the old crypto guys are still active on the center stage.
Is it because there is no innovation to attract new people, or is there no innovation because there are no strong new talents? This question is like the question of which came first, the chicken or the egg. I am more inclined to agree with the latter. Compared with before, the appeal of this industry to elites is weakening.
There are many reasons:
The collapse of FTX/3AC/DCG has brought the industry into a moment of disillusionment. Some elites and capital in traditional industries have lost trust in the crypto industry.
With the passage of Bitcoin ETF, traditional financial giants such as BlackRock and Fidelity began to intervene in the crypto market. Bitcoin and Ethereum gained external liquidity, but grassroots opportunities became increasingly scarce.
ChatGPT became a big hit, and OpenAI founder Sam Altman and Nvidia's Huang Renxun became AI heroes that attracted worldwide attention. AI surpassed WEB3 to become the darling of capital, and elites from all walks of life rushed to join the game.
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In short, the final status quo is that “old people are in power”: founders of old projects work on an assembly line and continuously launch new projects; old VCs personally get involved and develop (jump) new projects with high valuations; old industry veterans launch new projects based on new concepts...it’s all the same people and faces, and it’s indeed a bit boring.
According to the first principles, the future of this industry or investment opportunities, in the final analysis, is still related to people. Whether it is the primary or secondary market, investing in a coin is investing in the people and team behind it. There is no innovation, the narrative is outdated, there is no copycat market... In the final analysis, it is still because the industry lacks newcomers who can bring innovation, or the newcomers are still dormant and building, and it takes time to usher in the moment of qualitative change.
When writing this article, I happened to receive a news push that Binance Labs announced its investment in Particle Network.
A VC practitioner has invested in Particle Network continuously, and the reason he gave is very simple, "The founder is very strong, tenacious and perseverant, has ideas, knows how to behave, and has strong execution... No matter what track Particle Network chooses in the future, it will succeed."
At the beginning of its birth, the background of the Particle Network team was not dazzling, and it was even a bit " indistinguishable from the crowd". However, a few years later, some of the projects of the same period either shut down, Rug, or remained silent... Particle continued to iterate, from an MPC application to a modular L1 chain abstraction network, and now it has become a representative project in the field of chain abstraction.
Looking back at several projects of the same period, it is sad. When the projects encountered difficulties, some people blamed the market, "The market is not good, there is nothing I can do"; some people blamed the track, "This track is cold, there is nothing I can do"; some people blamed their own bloodline, "We are a Chinese project, we are discriminated against, and we don't get enough support"...
True warriors and ruthless people dare to face the bleak market and the challenging race track. Self-reliance will make you stronger.
We hope that the crypto industry will once again usher in an era of innovation and application with many tough guys emerging. When that time comes, do not hesitate to invest in the new heroes and tough guys of this era. Talent is the root of all problems and solutions to them.
