During this week in East 8 Time Zone, John Williams, the President of the New York Fed provided a medium growth expectation for U.S. GDP growth rate in the range of 2%-2.5% in 2026, offering the market a relatively clear long-term macro anchor. In the same time frame, the S&P 500, Nasdaq 100, and Dow Jones Index all reached new historical closing highs, indicating a significant rise in Wall Street's risk appetite. However, in stark contrast to the collective surge of traditional assets, the internal cryptocurrency market displayed dramatic divergence: on one side, high Beta narrative cryptocurrencies like TAO saw a pullback, while on the other side, inscription tokens like ORDI, SATS, and RATS surged 40% to over 120% within 24 hours. Against the backdrop of long-term 'warm water' style growth expectations already priced in, a glaring question arises: why did some cryptocurrency assets choose to drop while macro negativity had not visibly escalated, while the inscription sector instead experienced a high-leverage frenzy at this moment?

Moderate Growth Expectations: Wall Street's Adventure

In the 'recent' issuance of Williams' 2%-2.5% GDP growth rate for 2026 expectation, the three major U.S. stock indexes simultaneously broke out of a strong upward structure: the S&P 500, Nasdaq 100, and Dow Jones Index successively set new historical closing highs, reflecting a noticeable increase in risk appetite for traditional assets. For institutional investors, this implies that under the baseline assumption of 'no economic recession, yet not overheating', the profit expectations are sustainable, and the discounting of equity assets has not encountered new hard constraints, leading Wall Street to have reason to continue testing risk boundaries at historical highs.

From a macro perspective, a 2%-2.5% medium growth is often understood as a state of 'neither requiring extreme easing nor forcing violent tightening'. The market might speculate: the interest rate path is likely to evolve along the direction of 'gradual return to neutral', but when and how quickly it approaches this neutral range still depend on subsequent official statements on inflation and the evolution of actual data. Since this briefing does not provide specific predictions for inflation and unemployment rates, we can only discuss risk appetite within this broad framework and cannot extend to more granular macro model simulations.

In this context, traditional assets reached historical highs, yet this did not translate into an overall, synchronized 'bull market' in the cryptocurrency market. Compared to the last cycle of liquidity boom's 'cross-asset rise', the current situation resembles Wall Street continuing to leverage on familiar tracks, while the overall cryptocurrency market lacks a unified mainline. This sense of divergence lays the groundwork for the subsequent sector rotation of 'who gets abandoned and who gets favored': the macro situation becomes more predictable, yet the styles and capital distribution within the crypto market become increasingly extreme.

When Growth Expectations Materialize: TAO Pullback and High Beta Squeeze

During the time when Williams's medium growth expectation was released and the three major U.S. indexes hit new highs, the price of TAO briefly fell below $240, with a 24-hour decline of about 3.62% (according to a single data source), becoming a representative sample of AI narratives that were 'beaten down' by capital. It is important to emphasize that this data currently comes from a single channel, and specific trading structures and market details still await further information verification, but the price signal itself is already sufficient to indicate: at the very moment when traditional markets are on the rise, high Beta narrative cryptocurrencies have not gained overflow incremental capital, but rather faced proactive or passive retracement.

The logical suppression comes from both ends: on one end is the gradual realization of macro expectations, where the 'uncertainty boundary' of interest rates and growth paths is narrowed, and the option values of highly elastic narratives are re-priced by the market; naturally, sectors like AI, which are based on 'high forward growth + high story premium', face the brunt of this. On the other end, the traditional market hit new highs, and the liquidity and certain returns in the U.S. stock market siphoned off some risk-taking capital, which meant that cryptocurrency AI assets, originally hoping to capitalize on narrative premiums, simultaneously faced dual pressures of 'valuation discounts' and 'capital diversion'.

In such an environment, the behavioral path of short-term trading funds also became more defensive. Some funds opted to take profits at highs or during pullbacks, extracting chips from higher volatility, lower liquidity high Beta varieties; while another part restructured — either shifting toward projects with clearer cash flows and deflation logic to hedge against macro uncertainty, or simply seeking shorter and faster speculative windows in more extreme thematic styles (like inscriptions). Thus, the pullback of TAO is not merely a technical adjustment of a single project but rather a concentrated squeeze on high Beta narratives under the combination of 'macro expectations being pinned down + U.S. stocks hitting highs'.

JST Burn and Inscription Surge: Different Acts on the Same Stage

In contrast to the pressure on AI narratives, the JST and inscription sectors staged completely different dramas within the same time frame. On one hand, JST announced a single burn of 271 million JST, totaling approximately $21.3 million, accounting for 2.74% of the current total supply, and confirmed in the briefing that its treasury size has surpassed $100 million. Such deflationary actions supported by real income or assets reinforce the model narrative of JST 'income-driven repurchase + burning': in a macro environment anchored as medium growth, this model resembles companies in traditional markets characterized by 'good cash flow + stable repurchases', possessing a comparable valuation logic for medium to long-term capital.

From a funding perspective, the income-driven deflation model has two advantages in a 'moderate growth' scenario. First, the macro environment has not shifted toward recession, ensuring some sustainability of project revenues, making repurchases and burns not viewed as extreme operations of 'overdrafting the future', but rather as cyclical capital efficiency optimization; second, if the interest rate environment gradually returns to neutral, the market tolerance for 'risk assets backed by cash flows' is typically higher than for 'pure stories with no cash flow'. Therefore, projects like JST began to be viewed by some capital within the cryptocurrency world as 'equity-like + repurchase-like' assets, absorbing some chips withdrawn from high-volatility themes.

On the other side, inscription tokens like ORDI, SATS, and RATS exhibited completely different curves: ORDI's price surged past $6, with a 24-hour increase of about 121.68%, SATS rose by approximately 65.84%, and RATS increased around 41.51%, with the overall inscription sector displaying widespread and extreme gains. Rather than being a repricing of macro expectations, this situation resembles a short-term speculative frenzy that 'ignores the macro' — the underlying assets themselves lack traditional fundamental anchoring, and prices are primarily determined by liquid supply and demand, narrative heat, and market maneuvering. The macro 'warm water' provides a relatively stable large pool, while inscriptions create local turbulent waves on the surface.

Thus, we see a 'dual-track performance' on the same stage: one track is represented by JST, emphasizing deflation and cash flow, attempting to attract long-term capital with language and valuation logic closer to traditional finance; the other track is the inscription sector, quickly amplifying the chip maneuvering and narrative resonance in the gaps when macro noise is paused, performing a short-line gamble that is almost decoupled from macro influences. Both point towards the internal capital in crypto shifting from 'unified risk exposure' to a new stage of 'extreme style differentiation'.

Battle for Users Among Exchanges: VIP Downstream and Cross-Market Undertaking

The tearing of funding styles is also rapidly captured and amplified at the exchange level. Bitget adjusted its VIP system, with Chinese responsible person Xie Jiayin publicly stating: “VIP should not just be an identity label for a few high-net-worth users but should become a basic standard for serving every user on the platform.” The meaning behind this statement is clear—at a time when macro expectations are gradually stabilizing and opportunities within cryptocurrencies are highly dispersed, exchanges are no longer content with serving only top clients but are competing for a broader mid-tier user base by 'downstreaming VIP rights' to try to lock active funds that might otherwise drift between multiple platforms into their own ecosystem as much as possible.

At the same time, Bybit launched services for USDT to directly access traditional financial products, allowing users to trade traditional financial assets directly with USDT. In the context of U.S. stocks hitting new highs and relatively clear macro expectations, this initiative effectively opens up a fast track for cross-market asset allocation for users. For those who are concerned about crypto volatility but do not want to miss out on Wall Street trends, this product design significantly lowers switching costs, allowing them to flexibly maneuver between crypto and traditional assets under the same account and margin pool.

When macro expectations are relatively stable but opportunities are highly dispersed across different markets and segments, competition between exchanges is no longer merely about transaction fees and matching efficiency but rises to the level of 'who can better capture users' trading time and asset allocation rights'. On one end, Bitget tries to firmly hold mid-tier users within the crypto space through VIP system downscaling and service upgrades; on the other end, Bybit expands product boundaries, bringing trends from traditional financial markets directly to crypto users, vying for cross-market funds switching back and forth between U.S. stocks and crypto. The combination of both strategies forms a new framework for the competition between platforms and funds under the 'macro warm water + internal turbulence' pattern.

Macro Warm Water and Crypto Turbulence: The Game of Capital Redistribution

In conclusion, the long-term moderate growth expectations set by Federal Reserve officials, the historical new highs of the three major U.S. indexes, and the extreme differentiation of styles within crypto together constitute the core misalignment of the current market: at the macro level, there has not been a dramatic shift toward 'hard landing' or 're-inflation', and traditional risk assets continue to raise risk leverage under this baseline, while the crypto world opts to undergo a dramatic capital reorganization internally—high Beta narrative cryptocurrencies come under pressure, deflation and cash flow stories are repriced, and inscriptions perform high leverage speculation in a window of reduced macro noise.

In this scenario, a rough path of capital evolution can be sketched: initially, funds actively withdraw from subjects that are highly sensitive to macro expectations and have excessive volatility (like some AI narrative coins), to hedge against the valuation risks brought by 'expected differential corrections'; then, part of the capital flows toward projects with deflation mechanisms and cash flow support, such as JST, which strengthens its 'repurchase + deflation' narrative by burning 271 million coins, accounting for 2.74% of supply and its treasury exceeding $100 million, in search of a safety net closer to traditional asset pricing frameworks; another part of the capital, conversely, rushes into short-term speculation of inscription tokens like ORDI, SATS, and RATS, betting on obtaining excess returns in sectors with concentrated local liquidity and quickly ignited sentiment.

Looking ahead, the key variables that will truly determine whether this misalignment can continue or even amplify will still rest on two types of information: one is further official statements on inflation and its relationship with the interest rate path, which will influence the market's repricing of medium to long-term discount rates; the other is more granular capital flow data, including ETF subscriptions and redemptions, large on-chain transfers, exchange holdings, and VIP fund flows, which will help us verify whether the observed path of 'withdrawing from high volatility subjects, some flowing toward deflation and cash flow stories, and another pursuing inscription gambles' is sustainable or just a temporary emotional fluctuation. Throughout this process, any information that remains to be verified, particularly regarding details on inflation and the microstructure of the labor market, must be treated with sufficient caution; as for undisclosed or explicitly prohibited long-term forecasts, they should be excluded from the decision-making framework rather than becoming new fuel for emotional amplification.

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