"Friend, have you heard of Filecoin?" Who among the old investors does not know about Fil? As the absolute king project that was strongly supported by all exchanges including Binance at that time, Filecoin's highest market cap stage saw an FDV exceeding $500 billion (the highest historical price of Fil on Binance was $238.2). At one point, it surpassed the current market cap of Ethereum at $410 billion. The global market’s appeal is still very strong.
If you haven't participated in the continuous construction of Fil in recent years, you won't be able to find any signs of development from the price during the bear market. After all, this is an era that values appearances; price increases are justice, and I do not oppose this; in fact, I strongly agree. Price increases can bring traffic, attention, and the external effects of consensus expansion. Most importantly, price increases allow me to make money. In the comments section of a previous article about Fil, a friend asked, 'How much have you been trapped for promoting Fil?' I understand; this is likely one of the 'many souls' who were hurt after the last wild bull run of Fil. If you analyze the underlying message of this statement, the implication is that FIL does not deserve to rise. So, does Fil deserve to rise? (1) From a price perspective, everything has a price. The Fil price of $230 at that time corresponded to a $460 billion FDV, which was indeed far-fetched for a nascent entity. However, as the founding-level project with the strongest consensus in the Depin track, Fil, which has been listed on all major exchanges, has gone through many years of development and continuous improvement. A $5 Fil corresponds to a circulation of over $2 billion and an FDV just over $10 billion. In this new crypto super cycle, starting a new wave of price increase, is there any problem with that? The people who once FOMOed into Fil at $100 and $200 are precisely the same group who now look down on Fil at $3 and $4. Therefore, I am not writing this article for the old investors; the title makes that clear. Among the last batch of large Fil miners, few have survived to this day; most sold their Fil when it was around $5–$6. A well-known figure in the community, Long Wang, publicly told us that Fil could never exceed $5. Thus, when there was a surge breaking $10 at the beginning of the year, a certain mining company announced it would stop payouts and ran away. I guess they likely smashed users' Fil at around $5. In fact, Fil miners are still relatively young, most of whom rose after 2020, and many have not personally experienced previous cycles. The mindset of miners is not as stable as that of some long-term miners (especially those who have mined Bitcoin and Ethereum for many years). It’s important to know that Bitcoin and Ethereum spent significant time below the average electricity cost line in 2018 and 2019. In 2016, a certain exchange tycoon even sold BTC at a knockdown price, claiming based on mining models that BTC could never rise above $800 (after it did surpass $800, he still held onto the idea that it could never break $1,000). Many Fil miners may have heard these stories but have not lived through them. Under the pressure of a bear market, the aggressive expansion during a bull market inevitably leads to self-damage. Therefore, after Fil has hovered around $3 to $4 for a year or two and many miners sold off their remaining Fil after paying various costs, salaries, and even fines, I could foresee this outcome. As one of the OG miners around me put it, these miners are probably just confused by the bear market. If they had switched to SOL and BTC, it would be a different story, but if they simply cashed out, they would indeed miss out on a major bull market. (2) Everything present is garbage. The more projects you participate in, the more you will find that many later projects can't even compare to Fil, let alone see its taillights. For example, larger projects like Chia, HNT, and the giant pit Swarm, or smaller ones like Crust, OORT (formerly CCN), and the recent Aleo—none of these have surpassed Filecoin. Recently, the IO that has seen some improvement and got listed on Binance was incubated by Filecoin early on. To rephrase: it’s not that Fil is not capable; it’s that everything present is garbage. This is also why this wave of memes is so crazy; because infrastructure is still being built and bottlenecks are being broken through, memes are measured in minutes—can infrastructure achieve that? The Shenzhen-Zhongshan Channel is a bridge with a 60 billion RMB investment, and the construction has been ongoing for 6 or 7 years. (3) In the first quarter of next year, Filecoin's mainnet will undergo a significant upgrade. In recent years, Filecoin has been continuously developing and working; its code update volume is second only to Ethereum (of course, because the price hasn’t risen, Ethereum has also been criticized heavily). Promoting Filecoin is not problematic, and in the first quarter of next year, Filecoin's mainnet will complete a major upgrade, increasing efficiency by 480 times and significantly reducing gas fees. This means that people can also stake their tokens on Fil. As the saying goes, even if it’s black or red, it’s still red. The grassroots support for Fil is much broader than that of many of the current new projects. Of course, I also said that if Fil ultimately cannot prove itself, no one will continue to accompany it. Four years is not long for an infrastructure project, but if four years later it still gives no hope, that will be a significant issue. This also concerns whether the funds from the old generation of miners holding Fil have been replaced by a batch of new investors or if the new generation has rediscovered the value of Fil. There’s no need to elaborate further; time will provide the answer.
