Source: Talk Li Talk Outside

In this cycle, we have witnessed too many changes or new incredible things, such as:

1. The MemeCoin Season seems to have replaced the previous Altcoin Season.

2. Although BTC has reached the milestone of $100,000 and has broken through historical highs multiple times, the Altcoin king ETH has not even surpassed its historical high in this bull market, and the current price of ETH is the same as 4 years ago.

3. The number of projects (tokens) is growing exponentially.

For example, in March 2021, there were 350,000 tokens in the crypto market, and by March 2022, there were 4 million tokens in the market. By March 2025, the total number of tokens will exceed 40 million. At the current rate of development, it is estimated that by 2026, the number of tokens in the market may exceed 100 million, as shown in the figure below.

4. In 2024, BTC ETF will finally be officially approved, and ETH ETF will also be approved. Currently, more ETFs such as DOGE, XRP, LTC, SOL, and ADA are also applying for review (although the SEC has now postponed the approval of these Altcoin ETFs, combined with the overall market performance, the probability of passing through in the second half of this year may be higher).

5. In 2025, the United States will include BTC in the strategic reserve plan (executive order).

6. Institutions are actively hoarding BTC and some Altcoins.

Although in the previous cycle, the market has already seen the participation of large institutions like Grayscale, and we have also experienced the participation of institutions like Tesla, with Musk constantly milking, but from this cycle, the participation of major institutions has relatively reversed, becoming more extensive, such as the large institutions we have seen like MicroStrategy and BlackRock.

Of course, in addition to BTC, some other Altcoins have also begun to receive the favor and layout of some institutions. For example, WLFI (World Free Finance, a DeFi project supported by the Trump family) has been buying tokens such as ETH, ONDO, MOVE, ENA, LINK, and AAVE since the beginning of this year (it cannot be ruled out that some tokens have received sponsorship).

It seems that we have always been following the rules of historical cycles, while constantly witnessing some new differences or new history.

From an investment perspective, some veteran investors who have persisted in their investment philosophy seem to have suffered losses in this cycle, especially those who have insisted on concentrating all their investments in the Altcoin value investment strategy. A few days ago, I saw a fairly representative report saying that a whale had built a position in PENDLE eight months ago, but it seems that it was unable to hold on until this month and may have sold at a loss.

Of course, the big boss above is doing just that, and it is now very clear that the old cabbage farmers may still be insisting on holding Altcoins with a drop of more than 80%, and are now in a dilemma, such as not wanting to directly stop the loss, but also feeling that switching to BTC cannot make up the loss... In fact, anyone facing such an outcome would find it very difficult to make the choice to give up. As for what to do, we have given some of our own thoughts and suggestions from a long-term and short-term perspective in the article on March 11th. Interested readers can go back and read the corresponding article, and I won't go into it again here.

Let's set the macroeconomic factors aside for now. As for the crypto market itself, from the current overall market environment, it seems that people (including institutions) are unlikely to rekindle a similar "upward" trend in BTC in this cycle, because sometimes excessive attention can create a certain amount of pressure, and this "pressure" leverage may make it difficult for BTC to regain its dominant position (or even unable to continue to rise), prompting more people to turn to BTC (more and more people are now convinced that investing in BTC is better than investing in other Altcoins), and more and more people will actively take over when BTC falls...

And under the above new changes and new models in the market, it seems that we will hardly see the traditional Altcoin season again (i.e., when BTC reaches a certain historical high, its dominant position begins to decline, and then there is a scenario of Altcoins flying together). From this cycle, the so-called Altcoin season seems to have been replaced by the phased MemeCoin season, Trump season, AI season and other sector-specific Altcoin seasons (or we can call them mini Altcoin seasons) with rapid rises and falls.

Now, can we still see the "thousands of tokens flying together" traditional Altcoin season? I think this kind of comprehensive Altcoin season is already very difficult, you can't make 10 million tokens rise several times or tens of times at the same time!

In addition, the fundamental change in liquidity, that is, the crypto market has injected a large amount of liquidity (new money), supporting the logic that all Altcoins can rise together again.

But the next mini Altcoin season will still appear, it's just a matter of time. If you are still interested in Altcoins, but don't want to spend too much time and energy on project research or participating in PvP games, then just focus on exploring projects with strong fundamentals, such as projects that can generate sustained income, projects with good token economics, and projects that can continue to build and have development aspirations... The simplest way is to directly select from the top 100 by market cap.

It can be foreseen that in the future, liquidity will still be mainly concentrated on BTC and a few Altcoins, and the liquidity of most Altcoins may face a shortage or continuous reduction, and the massive Altcoins (plus the continuous unlocking of tokens from many VC projects at the source) will make liquidity more dispersed. As for this fundamental problem, we can only continue to patiently wait for internal refreshment (that is, innovation within the crypto market, but I don't see it for now) and changes in some macroeconomic factors (such as the expected rate cut in June this year and the new policies of the United States for the crypto industry this year) to form a quantitative solution to the internal problems of the crypto market.

I remember people often say this sentence: History does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes.

We need to understand this sentence reasonably. The so-called rhyming does not mean that we can directly find a sword on the boat. As the author of this article said, although the market cycle exists according to a certain rule, the market is also constantly evolving, and some scenarios in the previous cycle may no longer be fully applicable to the current cycle. We need to keep up with the times and constantly adapt and study the new scenarios of the current cycle.

At this stage, there are quite different opinions. Some people think that the market has already completely entered a bear market, some people think it is just a technical adjustment (the biggest bull market is still to come), and some people think the bull market has just begun. As for my personal opinion, someone has already shared it in a series of articles. I think there may be some new opportunities this year (but not on a large scale), but I couldn't see too far in the past. For now, let's just look at the possible situation in May and June.