We're all like frogs in slowly boiling water—by the time we realize something's wrong, it's already too late to jump out.
This crypto winter isn’t a sudden freeze; it’s a slow bleed of warmth. Starting from 2025, most primary funds have been feeling the pain. Projects invested in from 2022 to 2024 are lucky if they can even break even. The whole industry is entering a net value collapse phase. Some funds are forced to pivot to secondary markets, some just dissolve on the spot. By the second half of the year, many investment managers are basically out of work, with only a handful of post-investment issues left to handle.
The chill hits small and mid-cap alts first. Market cap ceilings keep dropping, liquidity is sucked out layer by layer, and smart money starts rotating into BTC and ETH, trying to find some warmth in deeper waters.
As for memes, they lose their spark as liquidity dries up across the board.
The primary market bear really started in Jan 2025. The peak was the start of the decline. Echo selling to Coinbase was the right move. As a top 20 user, most projects are in the red, quality is trash, and many project Twitters have just gone dark. Only a handful still have any respectable net value left.
But the market’s destructive power is always underestimated. When even BTC/ETH liquidity starts to thin out, the so-called safe havens aren’t safe anymore. It’s only in this recent “mass exodus” over the past couple weeks that people are waking up: this is a systemic tide going out.
No magic solution here. The key is just to survive. Only keep core positions in BTC/ETH, slash all new bets on launches, alts, NFTs, and absolutely no leverage. Make sure you’ve got 2-5 years of living expenses in stables.
If there’s a next cycle and liquidity comes back, let’s hope we’re both still here.
