The main line of this round has become quite clear:
1/ Memecoin and AI are absolutely the main tracks.
This year's Memecoin is significantly different from previous years; it has moved away from the concept of 'speculating on meme coins' and corresponds to the 2020 DeFi concept. Essentially, it is a brand new asset issuance method, where all infrastructure and services must rely on asset issuance. The left-side route of asset issuance is Memecoin, while the right-side route is RWA and VCcoin.
The left-side route is a global opportunity, while the right-side route is more structural opportunities, such as the revival trend of DeFi, the evil axis of ENA+Sky+Morpho, and old protocols like Curve and AAVE showing significant business growth; there are also some structural opportunities in BTCfi, CeDefi, and Payfi.
Therefore, I still do not have a positive outlook on ETH. Currently, ETH can only sustain side narratives. Although Coinbase will benefit greatly from the main narrative, to me, it feels more like various warlords seeking to contend with Dong Zhuo, each with their own secret motives, rather than the three heroes fighting Lu Bu with a united front. One likely scenario is that the ETH exchange rate cannot keep up with BTC on the upside, cannot keep up with Solana in the middle, and cannot keep up with DeFi blue chips on the downside.
2/ The influence of Western policy narratives has played only a small part.
During the election phase, the narratives of Trump and Musk have already displayed great potential. Two bigger events are yet to come: ① formal inauguration ② replacement of the SEC chairman. Meanwhile, ETH and MSTR have already taken over the role of Grayscale in the previous cycle, and more enterprises and sovereign nations will begin to allocate resources. This time it will only be bigger than in 2020.
The Western bright cards have continued their bull market.
Under the combination of the above internal and external factors, the importance of the ecosystem has become very clear. I won't elaborate on ecosystems that already have strong consensus or secondary consensus, but let’s talk about two ecosystems that still have very low attention:
3/ Bittensor ecosystem
I recommend Vitlik's recent interview, which is not related to ETH but contains some interesting viewpoints, including the authoritarian monopolization of AI and thoughts on future AI symbiosis. The big Beta in the Memecoin sector is undoubtedly ACT, and the Beta answer for the Alts sector is also very clear. Crypto AI can only be deAI or Fair AI, so Bittensor >> Worldcoin.
It is worth mentioning that last week media reported that the most promising candidate for the new SEC chairman is Teresa Goody Guillén, a partner at BakerHostetler law firm and co-head of the blockchain team. She is also the legal partner for Bittensor's first subnet, Masa. Since the news broke a week ago, despite BTC's pullback, $MASA has still risen by about 30%.
4 Near ecosystem
As the saying goes, those who act quickly get the meat, while those who act ten steps late get the shit. Near belongs to this situation; at the beginning of this year when Solana Memecoin just became popular, Near's Memecoin quickly followed suit, leading to the emergence of two tokens: Black Dragon and One Dragon. Near's founder @ilblackdragon also participated in Nvidia's AI conference.
But for a period of time afterward, Memecoin and AI were lukewarm. Now the wind of Memecoin and AI is blowing, reaching Solana, Base, SUI, BNBChain, but the Near players have grass three meters high on their graves.
However, the good news is that there is a metaphysical theorem: from DeFi to X2E, to NFT and inscriptions, Near always seems to catch the last train and get the last bite of warmth, but public chains that are behind Near basically can’t catch up at all. Near is the kind that eats but arrives late, and can stir things up while also having a broader vision. I just took a look; the Memecoin @dragonisnear with grass three meters high and the inscription @inscriptionneat with five meters high both still have $7m and very good exit liquidity.
