Chatting with friends from different types of circles, I discovered a very interesting phenomenon .. It seems that only 'Holder' is extremely pessimistic about the current market environment, and most traders do not take it seriously. My top article reveals the coexistence of "four parallel cycles and four different strategies", clearly making the Trader who embraces new rules the winner, while the Holder who sticks to traditional experience becomes cannon fodder? Ultimately, the "survival rule" of this bull market has completely changed: 🧵 Last cycle, there was still a stratification of Holder, Trader, and Builder groups in the market, and everyone was able to win by following their investment patterns; In this round, you will find that both Holder and Builder are grieving, and the only one who can survive in the market is the Trader with a gambling color. Next, I will analyze four major structural changes in the environment that may completely reshape your understanding of the current Crypto market ecosystem. ——1) VC funds enter a systemic exit trend: liquidity shifts from incremental to stock game; In the previous cycle, VC funds played the role of incremental funds, forming a synergistic effect with retail investors to jointly promote the arrival of a magnificent bull market. However, in the current cycle, a large amount of institutional funds have entered the harvest period and exit window after a crazy layout in the past 2-3 years. This is reflected in the fact that VC coins have been labeled as "dog ignoring" and exhibit a declining characteristic of "high opening+continuous decline". Although VC's heavy investment in supporting innovation in the crypto industry is also aimed at making money, the key is that there is a fundamental conflict between VC's exit logic and individual investors' investment logic. When VC enters the exit period, individual investors are actually paying for the liquidity of institutional investors' exit. This explains why even in a bull market, "going online is the peak" has become the fate of VC coins. ——2) Fundamental reconstruction of industry narrative ecology: Short and fast MEME has crushed the long termism of technological narrative; In previous cycles, innovation was distributed in a segmented manner, and funds also flowed in a segmented manner. DeFi Summer has a clear 6-month construction period and explosive period, the NFT craze extends from art collections to the metaverse with a complete 9-month narrative cycle, and GameFi has a clear 12-month development trajectory from Axie Infinity's Play to Earn concept to the entire sector's ecological construction. You see, each sector has its own technical logic, application scenarios, and value accumulation process, and more importantly, there is a clear "window for retail investors to participate and exit". Ordinary investors can enter the early stages of sector rotation and gain excess returns by following the narrative development. But the rise of MEME completely changed the rules of this game. What are the characteristics of MEME? Take off in 7 days, peak in 30 days, and approach zero in 3 months. Who would be willing to wait for a 2-year construction period for a technology project when speculative funds can generate returns of more than 10 times within a month, whether it's through building or playing games? MEME is not wrong, but the trend of pursuing MEME ultra short cycle gameplay has completely crushed the survival and development space of traditional technological narratives. Driven by short-term profit seeking, the funds and innovative forces behind MEME have fallen into a vicious cycle of speculation and conspiracy manipulation. The result is that the team that truly engages in technical development does not receive financial support, while the packaging concept project receives massive attention. Finally, as the market shifts from "inclusive sector rotation" to "specialized high-frequency harvesting", individual investors lose the opportunity to profit from following the technological narrative. ——3) Macro liquidity tightening and endogenous narrative overload: innovation dilemma under dual pressure; In terms of external environment, the repeated adjustment of the Federal Reserve's interest rate cut expectations, the continuous fermentation of geopolitical risks, and the cautious attitude of traditional financial markets towards risk asset allocation are all compressing the incremental funding sources of the Crypto market. Especially, the strong performance of technology and AI concept stocks in the US stock market provides a more "safe" high-yield option for venture capital, further compressing the funding channels for Crypto. In terms of internal environment, the industry has fallen into the dilemma of "narrative overload". Layer2、Restaking、zkVM、AVS、 The intensive emergence of technological concepts such as modularity, chain abstraction, and intent far exceeds the market's digestion capacity, but falls far short of expectations in terms of user experience, practical applications, and value delivery. In my opinion, the underlying problem is that the crypto industry has shifted from being dominated by geek innovation culture in the past to an internal competition driven by market speculation and demand. The early innovation of Crypto revolved around "decentralization, censorship resistance, performance TPS" and was still oriented towards solving practical problems. But at present, some projects are focusing on how to package concepts to attract investment. The result is that the concepts are becoming increasingly cool and the technology stack is becoming more complex, but ordinary users simply cannot feel the actual value. In the end, the caution of external funding and the loss of internal innovation formed a vicious cycle: the market no longer cares about how advanced your technology is, only about whether your story is attractive enough. This inverted incentive mechanism is stifling true innovation, and the entire industry's value judgment system is beginning to collapse. ——4) CEX Role Transformation: From Ecological Builder to Liquidity Harvester; In the previous cycle, mainstream CEX platforms such as Binance enjoyed huge dividends from institutional funding entering and incubating first tier projects, promoting the growth of high-quality projects through investment incubation methods such as Launchpad and Labs, and the "listing effect" was extremely prominent. At that time, the exchange held a huge number of users and liquidity, and indeed played a role in value discovery and liquidity allocation. But in the current cycle, CEX has become a "consumer" of industry dividends and a "reaper" of liquidity, shouting "Build" all day long as a big cousin, but abandoning reality and interpreting what it means to "Binance has no dreams". Nowadays, listing has not only lost its profit-making effect, but has also become a "peak buying signal". The original expectation was that the emergence of Binance Alpha would become a cradle for incubating and guiding innovative forces, but in reality, it has become another product "killer" that seizes market share and squeezes liquidity. What are the coin viewing areas and what are the air drop credit systems? They only use Internet product thinking to operate retail investors as "traffic pools". The core logic is that CEX faces significant operating costs in order to meet the needs of risk control and compliance, and has no choice but to use its accumulated user pool advantages to "maintain a profitable model". So the strategy shifted from actively supporting projects to passively screening projects, and from bearing market liquidity risks to avoiding risks ... shifting from creating incremental value to distributing and squeezing existing liquidity. In this way, the previously healthy tripartite win-win ecosystem of "exchange project user" has been disrupted. Exchanges no longer bear the responsibility of value discovery, project parties lose important growth channels, and users become harvested traffic pools. It is regrettable that when the most important liquidity hubs in the industry begin to "lay flat and collect rent", the innovation vitality of the entire ecosystem is systematically drained. above. Taking into account the four structural changes mentioned above, we can clearly see a harsh reality: Holder is facing a market where technological beliefs are collapsing, long termism is failing, and the value investment logic is completely bankrupt; And Trader is facing a paradise with abundant liquidity, huge volatility, and abundant speculative opportunities. They are not facing the same market at all. In the short term, Trader's strategy is indeed more suitable for the current environment, but in the long run, when the entire industry becomes a zero sum game casino, the foundation of innovation will be eroded, and the sustainable development of the market will lose its sustainability. After the Holder, the survival environment of the Trader will also be squeezed out, and the market will eventually have no winners. Perhaps this is the 'painful period' that the crypto industry must go through to mature. The market is using the cruelest methods to eliminate participants who are not adapted to the new environment, and is also using the final speculative frenzy to puncture this casino like survival environment. As a persistent holder, at least I have a simple dream: "When speculation is pushed to the extreme and when casino style reaches its peak, the market may find a new balance point after a complete 'demystification' - returning to the essence of technological innovation and value creation Note: Tell me your story. As a holder, what is the most frustrating thing for you? As a rising star in the trading industry, what have you gained from the new changes?