Written by: 0xLoki
The main line of this round has already become quite clear:
1/ Memecoin and AI are the absolute main lines of the track.
This year's Memecoin is very different from the past; it has moved away from the concept of 'trading dog coins' and corresponds to the DeFi concept of 2020. Essentially, it is a brand new way of asset issuance, and all infrastructure and services must rely on asset issuance. The leftist route of asset issuance is Memecoin, while the right route is RWA and VCcoin.
The left route is a global opportunity, while the right route is more of a structural opportunity, such as the revival trend of DeFi, the evil axis of ENA + Sky + Morpho, and old protocols like Curve and AAVE showing obvious business growth; there are also some structural opportunities in BTCfi, CeDefi, and Payfi.
Therefore, I still have a pessimistic view on ETH; for now, ETH can only carry side narratives. Although Coinbase will greatly benefit from the main narrative, it seems more like the warlords each having their own agenda rather than a united front against a common enemy. One likely scenario is that ETH's exchange rate cannot keep up with BTC above, cannot match Solana in the middle, and cannot outperform DeFi blue chips below.
2/ The impact of Western policy narratives has only played a small part
During the election phase, the narratives of Trump and Musk have already shown great potential. There are two bigger things coming next: ① formal inauguration ② replacement of the SEC chairman. Meanwhile, ETH and MSTR have already taken over the tasks of the previous cycle's grayscale, and more enterprises and sovereign countries will begin to allocate; this time it will be bigger than in 2020.
The Western bull market is still ongoing.
Under the combination of the above internal and external factors, the importance of ecosystems has become very clear. For ecosystems that already have strong consensus or secondary consensus, I will not elaborate further, but will mention two ecosystems that still have very low attention:
3/ Bittensor ecosystem
I recommend Vitlik's recent interview, which has nothing much to do with ETH but contains some interesting viewpoints, including thoughts on the authoritarian monopoly of AI and future AI symbiosis. The major Beta in the Memecoin sector is undoubtedly ACT, the Beta answer for the Alts sector is also very clear, and Crypto AI can only be deAI or Fair AI, so Bittensor >> Worldcoin.
It is worth mentioning that last week the media revealed that the most likely candidate for the new SEC chair is Teresa Goody Guillén, a partner at BakerHostetler law firm and co-lead of their blockchain team. She is also the legal partner for Bittensor's first subnet, Masa. Since the news broke a week ago, even with BTC's pullback, $MASA has still risen by about 30%.
4 Near ecosystem
As the saying goes, those who act a step earlier eat meat, while those who act ten steps earlier eat shit. Near belongs to this situation. Earlier this year, when Solana Memecoin was just getting hot, Near's Memecoin quickly caught up, producing the black dragon and the one dragon targets. Near's founder @ilblackdragon also participated in Nvidia's AI conference.
However, for a period after that, Memecoin and AI were lukewarm. Now, the wind for Memecoin and AI has picked up, reaching Solana, Base, SUI, and BNBChain, but the Near players are in a dire state.
The good news is that there is a mystical theorem: from DeFi to X2E, then to NFT and inscriptions, Near always manages to catch the last train and get the last piece of hot food, but public chains that come after Near basically miss out on everything. Near belongs to the type that although they arrive late, they still make an impact and are relatively well-structured. I just looked, and the Memecoin @dragonisnear with three-meter-high grass on the grave and the five-meter-high inscription @inscriptionneat now both have $7m and very good exit liquidity.
