Tiger Research, a global crypto research firm, recently concluded in a report that it's difficult to say the cryptocurrency market has entered a traditional "crypto winter." While repetitive patterns from past bear markets are still evident, the current situation differs significantly in that volatility is driven by external factors.
Tiger Research identified three stages as typical for a crypto winter: "major incident → collapse of trust → exodus of talent." These include the 2014 Mt. Gox hack, the 2018 ICO regulation, and the 2022 Terra-Luna and FTX collapses. Each event shocked the market, slowing technological progress and leading to the departure of numerous talents. According to Tiger Research, most of these incidents stemmed from internal issues within the industry, creating a shock that structurally shook the entire ecosystem.
However, this market decline is different from past ones. The sharp rise and fall of Trump meme coins and the October liquidation caused by the US's trade tariff policy were all external events. The cryptocurrency market has been experiencing ups and downs due to institutional factors like ETF approvals, interest rate fluctuations, and geopolitical instability. However, the industry's foundation of trust remains solid.
Indeed, various technological narratives, such as DeFi, real-world asset tokenization (RWA), privacy blockchains, and prediction markets, remain in the market, and new infrastructure and protocols are still emerging. Tiger Research symbolized this in its report with the expression, "A market that has never had a spring has no winter." In other words, the argument is that since the industry itself has not driven a period of upward momentum, the current correction is merely an external shock, not an internal factor.
Furthermore, changes in market structure are key to understanding this volatility. As regulations take hold, the market has become divided into regulated sectors (e.g., institutional custody, compliant DeFi), non-regulated sectors (memecoins, anonymous DEXs), and shared infrastructure (stablecoins, oracles). This also explains the weakened impact of Bitcoin (BTC) price increases on altcoins. Institutional funds flowing into ETFs have remained in regulated Bitcoin, with liquidity not flowing to non-regulated sectors as before. This has led to the disappearance of the traditional trickle-down effect, and a marked disconnection in the market's capital flow.
Tiger Research suggested two conditions for a future market rebound. First, the emergence of a killer use case that can expand into regulatory spheres. Like the past DeFi boom, a structure must be re-established where projects with clear value creation are experimented in non-regulated markets and then flow into regulatory spheres. The other key factor is the macroeconomic environment. They emphasized that without the support of interest rates, liquidity, and geopolitical stability in the cryptocurrency industry, innovation alone will be unlikely to drive a significant upswing.
Tiger Research concluded through research that the next cryptocurrency bull market will not be open to everyone. While regulated markets will continue to experience stable growth, unregulated markets still carry high risks, along with extreme volatility. This suggests deepening polarization within the crypto market, strengthening the outlook that a "crypto season," where all assets rise simultaneously, is no longer possible.
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