1/ Until just a few years ago, most coins were virtually no different from memecoins.
On the surface, they were adorned with grand visions and narratives, but in reality, there was almost nothing they could actually do. Buying, holding, and waiting for someone else to buy them at a higher price—that was essentially all there was to it.
This was not merely because participants in the coin market were irrational. It was because, at the time, coins themselves were not subjects of valuation.
They had no cash flow, no utility, and weak economic reasons to hold them.
They had prices, but there was no structure to rationally measure their value.
In other words, most coins at the time were closer to assets traded on expectations rather than assets that could be analyzed like businesses.
Atmosphere was more important than value, and narrative was more important than fundamentals.
In such a market, prices could rise, but they could not be valued.
2/ What changed this trend was DeFi.
It was only after the DeFi boom that coins began to transform from mere objects of trading into productive assets within the network. Users could earn interest by depositing coins into specific platforms, and staking began to link them to security, governance, fee distribution, and specific economic rights.
This was not merely a simple addition of functionality.
With the advent of DeFi, crypto assets began to possess "utility derived from holding" for the first time.
Assets that previously relied solely on price appreciation began to generate revenue and rights through the assets themselves.
3/ And a more significant change followed.
Users began paying to consume the services of specific platforms, and those platforms began to generate revenue.
Thus... moving beyond a few protocols and projects generating meaningful profits... protocols generating substantial cash flow are now emerging.
In other words, for the first time, we can now talk about entities within crypto that are close to being "sustainable profit-generating companies."
This is the crucial point.
What people miss is the fact that crypto is still not all the same asset class.
On the surface, they all look like tokens, but in reality, they are completely different. Some are still purely assets of expectation, some are already in use, and some are generating actual returns.
The problem lies in the fact that the market has not yet fully reflected this difference in its prices.
4/ The reason is not difficult.
It is simply because the emergence of these types of assets is very recent.
It has been less than five years since coins gained utility,
and it has been less than three years since protocols began generating meaningful returns.
Naturally, sufficient valuation standards for this have not yet been accumulated, and this return-based valuation approach is only vaguely understood as just one of many valuation methods.
The history for comparison is short, data is insufficient, and the market as a whole has not yet fully gone through multiple cycles.
Therefore, current prices are often irrational.
Return-generating assets are still traded like memes, while conversely, assets with weak actual intrinsic value receive excessive premiums.
This is because the valuation framework is still in its early stages.
The very concept of valuing based on returns is merely entering the market. 5/ But that is precisely why the opportunity is so great.
The market is always most clumsy when evaluating a new target for the first time.
Just as early internet companies and early SaaS firms did, current on-chain cash flow assets are going through a similar process.
Initially, everyone looks only at the price, but over time, they begin to look at the structure.
Narrative dominates in the beginning, but eventually, cash flow and attribution structures become more important.
And this shift is likely to accelerate in the future.
As institutional investors increase, capital accustomed to stock market-style analysis flows in, and the number of investors holding for the long term rather than short-term traders grows, the market will naturally begin to ask different questions.
How much does this asset actually earn?
How sustainable is that return?
To whom does that cash flow accrue?
Is the token actually connected to its value?
This is not simply a change in investor attitudes.
It means that the entire market's frame of interpretation is shifting.
If liquidity, narrative, listing, and momentum have explained prices until now, going forward, revenue, earnings, profit attribution structures, and tokenomics will increasingly emerge as important variables.
In other words, crypto will gradually begin to be evaluated not by "how hot it is," but by "what it leaves behind."
Of course, this process will not happen all at once.
Crypto remains highly volatile, riddled with incentive distortions, and has incomplete accounting and disclosure standards.
It is also not an area where the valuation frameworks of traditional markets can be simply transplanted.
However, the important thing is not whether one possesses perfect standards.
6/ The important thing is that the market is clearly moving in that direction.
Ultimately, as traditional players increasingly enter the on-chain finance market, they will value more crypto assets in accordance with their perspective on finance.
And at the core of that valuation will ultimately lie cash flow. Projects that generate actual profits, ensure those profits are sustainable, and have a structure where value aligns with token holders are highly likely to be re-evaluated in ways different from now over time.
This is because the market itself is likely to shift from a speculative-centric interpretation to a capital market-centric one.
It is still in the early stages.
Therefore, standards are incomplete, and prices are irrational.
However, precisely because it is the early stages, distortions are significant, and because distortions are significant, opportunities are also great.
Now is not the time to view all coins in the same way.
From now on, we must make distinctions.
We must distinguish between assets traded based solely on expectations and assets that are actually used; we must distinguish between assets that are used and assets that generate actual profits; and we must further distinguish between assets where those profits accrue to holders.
Only then can we discuss value, not just price.
The valuation of crypto is not yet complete.
However, that is not merely a weakness.
Rather, we are currently in a phase where the very standards for valuation are being established.
And the greatest opportunities always arise when the market does not yet know exactly what to evaluate or how to evaluate it. In other words, what is important in crypto right now is not simply predicting what will go up.
It is to first identify which assets will ultimately be valued.
The market still reflects excitement in prices more quickly.
However, as time passes and capital matures, cash flow eventually becomes a criterion that is difficult to ignore.
The fundamental revaluation of crypto will likely begin in earnest from that point on.
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