Author: Ansem

Compiled by: Deep Tide TechFlow

Deep Tide Introduction: As market sentiment wanes, BTC is consolidating at high levels, and ETH continues to face downward pressure, the voices claiming that crypto is "over" are once again loud. Renowned trader Ansem provides a rebuttal in this tweet: poor performance of large coins does not equal industry recession; stablecoins, perpetual contracts, and tokenization are the real structural narratives. For investors still trying to allocate assets amid confusion, this is a long-term framework that deserves serious consideration.

Disagree, crypto is just going through a maturation phase.

Stablecoins, perpetual contracts, and tokenization as themes will continue to penetrate the global economy, and many successful crypto startups will emerge.

Hyperliquid is just the first, demonstrating how powerful the combination of open blockchain and business tokenization can be — there will be more to come.

The current issue with crypto market sentiment stems from the poor performance of mainstream large coins. BTC has risen from $0.01 to $100,000 in less than twenty years, and it has very successfully completed its mission of resisting the continuous decline of the dollar's purchasing power. The current issue Bitcoin faces is the "Ponzi-like" tendencies brought about by Saylor's operations, which are temporary. I believe that before this issue is resolved, BTC will not see a significant upward trend. Moreover, concerns about quantum computing are real. These two points, along with the liquidity withdrawal by institutions, provide ample reasons for BTC's old players to de-risk their excess liquidity — we have already seen concrete cases, such as the significant OTC transaction handled by Galaxy (completing a $9 billion sale for a single entity in 2025). There are many similar individuals whose holdings are already in a state of infinite profit.

However, after BTC has outperformed all assets on Earth for over a decade, a few years of underperformance does not mean crypto is dead — that assertion is absurd.

Ethereum is also suffering for its own unique reasons. I feel I have talked enough about this topic, but indeed, it has been suppressed by competition from new entrants and has failed to establish ETH as a worthwhile long-term holding asset. All L1s are struggling on the demand side because the stories of these tokens historically have been about "future growth," not real revenue. But now Hyperliquid has concretely proven that a business can be directly connected to L1 tokens, rendering the previous L1s quite passive — they captured too little revenue from applications using their infrastructure. Ethereum's situation is worse because it also outsourced execution activities to Rollups.

But this also does not mean that more successful crypto startups will not emerge.

The improvement in crypto regulation has a very clear trend, which will greatly lower the barrier for entrepreneurs to build crypto businesses. Meanwhile, existing tech companies are also recognizing the advantages of blockchain, with Robinhood, Stripe/Tempo, and others serving as clear evidence.

AI has captured a significant amount of attention that originally belonged to crypto, and since the bottom in late 2022, tech stocks have performed far better than crypto. As a trader, allocating time between stocks and crypto is extremely wise. In the past, if you were willing to take risks, being overexposed to crypto was reasonable — it was an emerging industry that experienced extraordinary returns as it moved towards the mainstream.

Moving forward, with AI models making exponential progress in the coming years, there are three underestimated tailwinds for crypto:

1) Open-source AI will become more competitive against closed-source AI

2) Small teams will find it easier to build successful startups using software

3) Stablecoins and blockchain are better infrastructures for AI agents to conduct transactions

These overlapping trends suggest that the crypto experiments and token innovations you see may be more, not less — especially against the backdrop of continuously improving regulatory environments and retail speculation becoming the next big trend.