Written by: Crypto Wetuo Source: X, @thecryptoskanda
I basically didn’t go to any venues this year, except Breakpoint, which was all private venues. The following is a summary of my participation
1. Winter is coming for first-level institutions
Basically, all the first-level institutions I talked to gave negative feedback, and even made a comment that "first-level institutions are dead." Basically, every household has a large amount of SAFT with no TGE or TGE unlocked (the price is already very ugly). Several OTC institutions have mentioned that there are many deals where buyers cannot be found.
As for the new fund raisings that are carried out in every cycle, they are also in a state of sharp shrinkage. 1/10 of the 100 million announced to the outside world may actually be received, and the rest are committed. In the last round, we casually raised 501 billion. In this case, we can only increase the amount of investment in each project, which will have to push up the valuation, creating one "death" project after another, but this time There is no more SBF for the round. Then we can only invite a few "head funds" to die.
In addition, basically every first-level institution has mentioned that it wants to enter the incubation track. However, to put it bluntly, the staffing and GP capabilities of these institutions have nothing to do with incubation. There has never even been a project from 0 to closed. Experience - How to do incubation?
2. Everyone pretends to care about the “real scenario”
Every organization that catches me on the spot will ask me what track I'm looking at recently (although everyone is actually pretending to look at deals), and then I ask this question back, and many of them answer: real income, real users, real Scenario projects, and then a meal of RWA, AI, Depin, etc., as if these words really mean something. Everyone understands this - there is really nothing that can be used as a thesis to prove that one is "researching".
In fact, everyone knows that the idea of finding real Web2 scenes to fill the "Web3" narrative vacuum was falsified as early as the 2022 round. Today, I went to look at the last round of coin listings on Binance and today, the most dismal performance is the application projects with "scenarios". It’s not that Crypto doesn’t need this kind of innovation, but that they have nothing to do with the real “positive externality” of the currency circle - asset liquidity.
The apple never falls too far from the tree
3. New users are entering the market in large numbers using gestures that practitioners cannot understand.
Many organizations and project parties at the event used this opening line: "There are no new users or new funds coming in this round. In order to let them come in, how should we XXXX"
On the other hand, @IGGYAZALEA dropped the most outrageous but awesome party in the history of Crypto. It was outrageous but truly Crypto native and attracted attention from outside the circle (rather than the top signal of Zuckerberg’s sister We Gonna Make It);
Everyone knows that this @Solana Breakpoint is the best public chain ecological conference in recent years, and it can be called the Burning Man Festival in the currency circle. But why is BP so awesome?
I think what everyone hasn’t noticed is that the KOLs @SolJakey @solanasteve_ @chooserich and Solana who continue to produce video content for Breakpoint, in addition to @redactedcoin, and @doginhood_io who “smuggled 20,000 condoms” won the “Best KOL Award” Professor Crypto. They are covering everything that is happening in the currency circle in a way that has never been seen before.
These are all ways of doing things that have never appeared before and belong to the Gen Alpha generation in the Tiktok era. Many Solana project parties or Cabal are less than 20 years old - and these are things that old Leek practitioners cannot understand.
Newcomers are entering the market in ways and at a rate never seen before, and many people are simply turning a blind eye. Soon the narrative logic, operation methods, and communication logic of the entire currency circle project will undergo fundamental changes.
Summarize
The greatest lesson of human history is that people do not learn anything from history. No offense is intended, but judging from the summaries of many people after the 2049 Peace Conference, this point is still applicable in the currency circle.
Every time we encounter difficulties in the industry, we will resort to empty "real income, real users, real scenarios" and "let traditional funds enter the market". However, the lesson of history is that these remnants of the industrial age are just tourists in the Crypto world. They can only come in to do carry trade and will not change anything. If we don’t start from the perspective of the currency circle, the so-called “real scene” is just a curious use of currency to do scenes that have been solved by legal currency decades ago.
The biggest constraint in the currency circle is not products, but people. Human's way of thinking and learning ability are limited and fixed. Therefore, the way the audience recognizes and understands Crypto within a period of time determines how they will come in to act as exit liquidity for the currency circle, and is also the only factor that determines what the currency circle needs to become.
To put it bluntly, the older generation is too stupid to use new things, and the new generation must wait until they die to take over.
You can't find the New World by following the old map (unless you are really dumb like Columbus)
What went so wrong that many of the best in our industry are now unable to learn from history and realize that the future is already here?
