The market is sluggish and the narrative is hopeless. Where is the spiritual pillar of Crypto?

‍Since BTC fell below $80,000 a week ago, the entire Crypto market has fallen into a slump. This downturn is not only due to the market itself, but also due to the fact that the entire industry seems to be in an endless "empty". Since the Agent and Desci were shut down at the beginning of the year, the market seems to have no new narratives, and even if there is no hot stuff in almost 3 months, it will make people excited - except for the "stumbling" copycat.

Another news was also seen over the weekend. The former director of the Avalanche Foundation tweeted on the X platform that it confirmed that the three directors of the foundation had resigned collectively, and since then, the board of directors has been on the wait-and-see state, trying to find a way forward. It is hard to imagine that this is still a project with a market value of over 8 billion US dollars and a top 20 project, which looks like a "headless fly".

So, when the market is so sluggish, and no new narratives appear or the track worth pursuing is rekindled with hope, what is the spiritual pillar of the Crypto industry that has been developing for more than ten years?

Perhaps some people may say it is the belief of BTC, or the money-making effect of reincarnation every four years (although it has become somewhat invalid at present), or the "Xiaoqiang spirit that cannot be beaten to death". The author has thought for a long time and will give feedback to you to encourage you.

Elon Muske's way of thinking about problems is to get used to returning to the essence of things to look at the problem, which is the first principle. We might as well learn a little bit and explore where Crypto starts?

On November 1, 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto released a BTC white paper, describing his new vision for electronic currency, and digging out the first block of BTC on January 3 of the following year, thus opening up Crypto's grand narrative. Then people extracted "Block" and "Chain" from the BTC white paper, forming the "blockchain" that became popular in the circle later.

At this point, people began to explore along the technological development of blockchain. V God introduced smart contracts into blockchain and Ethereum. BM brought the earliest public chain logic into blockchain and EOS. Then more professionals joined this field. We began to have NFT, DeFi, and then GameFi and DePIN.

All of this seems to come from BTC, but it also originates from the development of blockchain technology itself. Blockchain has three cores that must be learned in the industry: decentralization, immutability, and transparency . These three characteristics have been throughout the development of blockchain in the next few decades.

Because we desire decentralized exchanges, we have Uniswap and more DEXs; because we want copyright transactions to be realistic and transparent, we have NFTs; because we desire financial equalization, we have DeFi; and because we are tired of giant enterprises monopolizing the industry, we have DePIN.

And recently, because we are afraid that AI will become the "sickman" of centralized institutions in the future, we have DeAI (including DeFAI/DePAI); and because excellent scientists do not want to be neglected by institutions all the time, we have DeSci; and even because people hate the monopoly of VC, MEME has become popular.

These new nouns that appear every few months seem illogical, but in fact they are the earliest characteristics of blockchain, which are just presented in one way. Perhaps this is the origin of Crypto. After all, Satoshi Nakamoto was also tired of the centralized and over-issuance of the traditional monetary system, so he had BTC, which was the earliest characteristic manifestation.

Therefore, in the face of the current market sluggish and hopeless narrative moment, Crypto's true spiritual pillar should return to the blockchain technology itself to think about the significance of the birth of this technology and which industries or fields this technology can bring changes to.

The reason why BTC is powerful enough and lasts forever is that it perfectly practices the technical core of blockchain in terms of monetary attributes. Many projects that cannot be supported mostly deviate from this core and cannot find a place to settle down. Therefore, once the price collapses, there will be no direction and even the community will not be confident, because they don’t know why blockchain is needed. After all, isn’t the Internet faster in terms of efficiency alone?

Going back to personal investment, we are looking for teams that are still practicing the value of blockchain technology itself. Of course, don’t just look at what they say, but also what they do. They are the future of Crypto’s current dilemma, and it is also the original intention that we old guys are still sticking to in this industry after the ups and downs.

Finally, it may be more appropriate to summarize the whole article using a recent sentence from the industry's old OG and Binance founder CZ. "It is simple to predict the Crypto trend in the next 10 years, and it is difficult to predict tomorrow's trend."

Similarly, it is difficult to judge the specific development narrative of Crypto's future, but looking back at the essence and starting point of Crypto is actually very simple. After all, it stands in the middle of the square, neither humble nor arrogant, and stands firm.