After BTC fell below $80,000 a week ago, the entire Crypto market has fallen into a slump. This slump is not only due to the collapse of the market itself, but also because the entire industry seems to have fallen into an endless "void". Since the Agent and Desci went out at the beginning of the year, the market seems to have lost its new narrative, and there has been nothing exciting for about 3 months - except for the "endless decline" of altcoins.
Over the weekend, I also saw another news that the former director of the Avalanche Foundation tweeted on the X platform, confirming that the three directors of the Foundation had collectively resigned, and the board of directors has since been in a state of observation, trying to find a way forward. It's hard to imagine that this is a project with a market value of over $8 billion and is currently in the Top 20, which also seems to be a "headless fly".
So, in the current sluggish market and the lack of new narratives or hot tracks worth pursuing, where is the spiritual pillar of the Crypto industry that has been developing for more than a decade?
Perhaps some would say it is the faith in BTC, or the money-making effect of the four-year cycle (although it has become somewhat ineffective now), or the "indestructible cockroach spirit". After much thought, the author would like to share the results with you.
Elon Musk's way of thinking about problems is to habitually go back to the essence of things to look at the problem, that is, the first principle. Let's learn a thing or two and explore where Crypto started.
On November 1, 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto released the BTC whitepaper, stating his new vision for digital currency, and on January 3 of the following year, he mined the first BTC block, thus kicking off the grand narrative of Crypto. Subsequently, people extracted "Block" and "Chain" from the BTC whitepaper, forming the later popular "blockchain".
From then on, people began to explore along the development of blockchain technology. Vitalik brought smart contracts into the blockchain, giving birth to Ethereum. BM brought the earliest public chain logic into the blockchain, giving birth to EOS. Subsequently, more professionals joined this field, and we began to have Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), Decentralized Finance (DeFi), and then GameFi and DePIN, etc.
All of this seems to come from BTC, but it is also rooted in the development of blockchain technology itself, and blockchain has three core principles that must be learned when entering the industry: decentralization, immutability, and transparency. These three characteristics have permeated the development of blockchain over the past decades.
Because we crave decentralized exchanges, we have Uniswap and more DEXs; because we want copyright transactions to be truly transparent, we have NFTs; because we yearn for financial equality, we have DeFi; and because we are tired of giant corporations monopolizing industries, we have DePIN.
And recently, because we are afraid that the future AI will become the "sickle hand" of centralized institutions, we have DeAI (including DeFAI/DePAI); and because excellent scientists don't want to be constantly overlooked by institutions, we have DeSci; and even because people are disgusted with the monopoly of VCs, MEME has become popular.
These new terms that keep popping up every few months may seem illogical, but in fact they are all expressions of the earliest characteristics of blockchain, just presented in a different way. Perhaps this is the origin of Crypto. After all, Satoshi Nakamoto was also fed up with the centralized abuse of the traditional monetary system, which is why BTC was born, which is the earliest expression of this characteristic.
So, in the face of the current sluggish market and the lack of a promising narrative, the true spiritual pillar of Crypto should be to look back at the blockchain technology itself, to reflect on the meaning of the birth of this technology, and what industries or fields this technology can bring changes to.
The reason why BTC is so powerful and enduring is that, in terms of monetary attributes, it perfectly practices the core technology of blockchain. And many unsustainable projects have deviated from this core, unable to find a foothold, so once the price collapses, they also lose direction, and even fail to give the community confidence, because they don't know why they need blockchain, after all, in terms of efficiency, the Internet is not faster?
Looking at personal investment, now is the time to find those teams that are still practicing the value brought by blockchain technology itself. Of course, don't just look at what they say, but more importantly, look at what they do, and they are the future of Crypto's current predicament, and also the initial heart that we old-timers have been sticking to in this industry despite ups and downs.
Finally, it may be appropriate to summarize the whole article with a sentence recently said by the industry's old OG, the founder of Binance, CZ, "Predicting the Crypto trends for the next 10 years is easy, but predicting the trend for tomorrow is difficult."
Similarly, it is difficult to judge the specific development narrative of Crypto's future, but looking back at the essence and starting point of Crypto is actually very simple, after all, it is standing in the center of the square, neither humble nor arrogant, standing tall and unshakable.
