Fisher8 Capital, a cryptocurrency investment firm, recently released its " 2025 Year in Review ," noting that the past year was extremely challenging for most cryptocurrency funds. With highly volatile fund rotation and crypto assets significantly underperforming traditional assets, the market has officially bid farewell to the era of a "broad bull market" and entered a phase of highly selective structural differentiation.
Fisher8 stated that despite significant pullbacks in long-term themes such as AI and DePIN in 2025, the team chose to weather the volatility and maintain a medium- to long-term allocation, ultimately delivering a positive return of 16.7% for the year. However, the report also acknowledged that, measured by risk-adjusted returns, the investment experience was even less favorable than investing in the childcare industry.
Author's Note: Market forecasts indicate that the child care market will experience a compound annual growth rate of 5.72% from 2026 to 2035. Rising inflationary pressures are significantly increasing the demand for child care. Parents, needing to continue working to cover monthly expenses, are unable to personally care for their children, further driving up the demand for professional care services.
Institutional narratives recede, Trump deal reversal impacts crypto market
The report reviews that by the end of 2024, the market was generally betting that a Trump victory would bring a crypto-friendly regulatory environment, including a shift in stablecoin policy, the idea of a strategic Bitcoin reserve, and the launch of crypto projects related to Trump himself, making crypto assets one of the most volatile assets in Trump-related transactions.
However, post-election reality did not quickly deliver on expectations. With slow policy implementation, a lack of legal breakthroughs, and market de-risking, Trump-related assets and the crypto market both declined, highlighting the risk that some crypto asset prices have been financialized by politically personalized narratives.
Fisher8 points out that the Executive Order on Expanding Accessibility to Alternative Assets, signed in August 2025, allows 401(k) retirement trustees to consider digital asset allocation. While it did not immediately bring in funds, it substantially changed the demand structure of the crypto market, paving the way for medium- to long-term funds to enter the market.
Risk assets are becoming K-shaped, and the myth of long-term Altcoin holding has been shattered.
The report indicates that the risk-on trend in 2025 has clearly subsided. Even as Bitcoin hits a new all-time high, memes and long-tail assets have performed relatively weakly, with funds shifting to a few assets with institutional advantages, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and applications with cash flow or value capture capabilities.
Fisher8 argues that, aside from assets like BTC, ETH, and SOL that are already institutionally pegged, most tokens only rise while the narrative exists. Once the narrative fades, liquidity quickly dries up, and the assumption of long-term returns no longer holds.
The rapid expansion of the Digital Asset Vault (DAT) has exposed structural risks.
Another significant phenomenon in 2025 is the rapid expansion of Digital Asset Vaults (DATs). Fisher8 points out that some DATs mimic the MicroStrategy model, becoming a conduit for crypto asset exposure before ETF approval, but many Altcoin DAT structures are highly predatory.
The report states bluntly that many DATs create exit liquidity by exchanging tokens for equity, coupled with extremely low-cost private placements and lenient lock-up conditions, ultimately causing retail investors to be under pressure in both the equity and token markets, resulting in a rapid erosion of value.
Investment themes for 2026: Application Layer, Selectivity, and Verifiable Value
Looking ahead to 2026, Fisher8 makes three core predictions:
The premium of the new generation of Altcoin public chains is disappearing.
The real asymmetric opportunities will emerge at the application layer. As mainstream blockchains become highly concentrated in market share, new blockchains will struggle to break through user and liquidity barriers. Conversely, applications with real revenue potential will remain undervalued in the long term.
The 2026 US midterm elections will exacerbate market volatility.
Crypto assets remain attractive amid a mix of fiscal expansion, potential inflation, and policy uncertainty, but the path ahead will be more turbulent.
The crypto market enters the K-type token economy
Protocols with verifiable and auditable value capture mechanisms are favored by the market, while tokens with ambiguous value attribution and still relying on trust narratives will face long-term liquidity shortages.
Institutions predict that investing in the crypto market will become more difficult in 2026.
Fisher8 concludes that 2026 will no longer be a bull market where everyone benefits equally, but rather a year highly sensitive to asset structure, governance design, and value alignment. Investment will become significantly more difficult, but this will also create room for repricing projects that truly have fundamentals.
This article, titled "The Crypto Market Will Be Highly Differentiated in 2025, with Fund Returns Underperforming the Childcare Industry! Investment Difficulty May Increase Further in 2026," first appeared on ABMedia (a ABMedia ).
