Author: David Hoffman

Translation: ShenChao TechFlow

The Bitcoin Bid Trophy

"How did ZEC soar so aggressively?"

"Where does this endless buying power come from?"

"How can an asset catapult from a $200 million market cap to $26 billion without any manipulation?"

In the cryptocurrency realm, every so often, one asset wins the crown of "Bitcoin Bid."

It is well known that Bitcoin veterans hold their BTC tightly. The strong cohesiveness and narrative of the Bitcoin community have established an extremely solid Schelling point (consensus focal point) around "buy only BTC," and it works very effectively. The value of this consensus currently amounts to $1.7 trillion.

This defensive line has hardly ever been broken. Those Bitcoin believers who defect to buy other assets are shamed, mocked, and ostracized. There is only one iron rule in the Bitcoin circle: don't touch shitcoins. The second iron rule is: everything other than Bitcoin is a shitcoin.

However, after all, Bitcoin veterans are still human, and they too cannot be completely immune to temptation, jealousy, or greed. As the saying goes, "Bitcoin fundamentalism in public, secretly playing with shitcoins in private."

Usually, they defect quietly, and no one notices or cares. But occasionally, when enough people defect and rush toward the same asset, defection becomes contagious.

This is exactly what happened with Ethereum (ETH) in 2021. It also explains why ETH experienced such a violent revaluation that year—soaring from a low of $12 billion to a high of $554 billion.

Reflect back on that absolutely classic quote from Su Zhu in October 2021:

"At this stage, some people I know even fly around the world to take their Bitcoin out of cold wallets to swap for Ethereum. If your personal brand is that of a Bitcoin maximalist on Twitter, you can't surrender in public because you'd lose followers, but I am sure these people privately hold a lot of ETH."

ZEC in 2026 is like ETH in 2021

ZEC has already created a sufficiently strong Schelling point for "Bitcoin bid." Outside, there is a $1.7 trillion BTC capital pool, needing only a small portion of Bitcoin believers to recognize the value of ZEC—whether due to its own merits (privacy, quantum resistance), or just as a hedge for their BTC exposure.

This is why ZEC is soaring (Up only).

Compared to the massive $1.7 trillion, a $26 billion market cap is still just a drop in the bucket. As long as ZEC can persuade a small group of Bitcoin believers to allocate a little ZEC "just in case"—just like Bitcoin believers try to convince the whole world to buy some BTC "just in case"—ZEC will continue to rise.

The amount by which ZEC has increased in USD is not important. What matters is the size ratio of ZEC relative to BTC because the driving force behind ZEC's buying power comes from vast Bitcoin wealth. If I am wrong, feel free to correct me, but I believe very few fund allocators would heavily buy ZEC purely based on its technical fundamentals while completely skipping BTC, ETH, and all other crypto assets.

NEAR is the new smart contract Schelling point

I believe the same phenomenon is repeating with NEAR. I think NEAR has won the "smart contract bid" trophy for 2026.

Clearly, the "smart contract bid" that NEAR is contending for is weaker than the "Bitcoin bid" that ZEC is seizing. In the crypto world, store of value always comes first, with smart contract public chains coming in second.

ETH's control over the "smart contract trophy" has always been weaker than BTC's control over the "store of value trophy." The threat posed by SOL to ETH is far greater than any threat to BTC. Moreover, the Ethereum culture has always been looser, more tolerant, and more diverse than the Bitcoin maximalists.

Therefore, the group attracting buying power to NEAR may be much more diverse than the group ZEC attracts from Bitcoin believers. But even so, the effect is the same.

Fewer and fewer people want to buy those big blue chips, and the reason is simple: the yields are no longer there. Furthermore, as of today in 2026, they carry too much technical debt and appear to be technologically lagging.

The Blue Chip Curse

Unfortunately, this dynamic leaves the crypto industry with a dilemma: someone still has to buy those blue chips.

Bitcoin needs to evolve beyond a highly volatile digital currency into a mature alternative to gold. But recently, BTC doesn't seem to be fulfilling that role very well, and despite gold having various shortcomings, gold remains gold.

As for ETH, who else would buy it after Tom Lee? I still haven't seen any evidence or narrative that could allow it to rise tenfold again. If the top two in the industry cannot increase tenfold from their current positions, how can our industry move forward?

Of course, the industry will definitely advance. Hyperliquid, Venice, Lighter, Ethena, and Morpho have all brought incredible innovations. However, unless the total crypto market cap leaps from $3 trillion to $30 trillion, the value created by these startups will likely be captured by forces outside the crypto sphere, rather than benefiting our local blue chips.

Robinhood, Coinbase, Apollo, and traditional brokerages appear to be better positioned than BTC and ETH to capture this new asset appreciation. Whether BTC and ETH can capture any meaningful value from them remains in question.

If this dynamic continues, we may always have new winners, but the overall scale of the industry may still be much more niche than we once envisioned.

Hopefully, I am just being too impatient and hope the total crypto market cap can truly break $10 trillion!

Zillions!