On Jan.20th, 2025, Trump returned to D.C. Within just a few days, he not only issued multiple executive orders but also introduced the combination of $Trump and “family tokens.” This unprecedented global financial upheaval not only triggered drastic changes and shocks but also kept people up for nights, gripped by FOMO. Solana was propelled to an all-time high, and Meme coins undeniably became the biggest focus.

Putting aside profits, losses, and emos, the question is: Is this the beginning or the end?

No matter what Trump does, as mentioned in a previous article “The Dramatic Shift Following Trump’s Election Victory”, Trump is just leveraging the Crypto trend to make decisions beneficial to himself at this historical juncture. However, it can be said that the market capitalization and price of $Trump are products of the global consensus habitually accumulated through narrative-driven value expectations over multiple cycles of the Crypto market. Simply put, he has achieved the peak of monetizing Meme and narrative consensus.

Although as of the end of January, the Meme frenzy continues, the high-risk PVP game has significantly shortened the duration of single-token value fluctuations and downturn periods. It can be said that the quantitative experience of long-term investors and professional financial practitioners — including myself — has been completely overturned by gmgn and tgbot. However, the fundamental trend remains clear: A peak is always the final archiving of the previous stage’s consensus, and the first growth curve of Crypto is about to end.

tl;dr

1.Zero-Sum Game and the 7 Giants at the Table

2.The Significance of Crypto’s First Growth Curve and the Final Stretch

3.Negative-Sum Game and the Dilemma of “Last-Cycle” VC Tokens

4.The Trend of RYA/RWA and the Rise of PayFi

5.Crossing the Chasm: The Second Growth Curve of Crypto

6.The Crypto Development Landscape and National Scenarios Under Compliance Challenges

7.Opportunities and Challenges in 2025 Amidst Transformational Shifts

1. Zero-Sum Game and the 7 Giants at the Table

Over the past 16 years and 4 market cycles, Crypto’s wealth creation has visibly slowed down, with the most evident sign being its struggle to break free from the $3 trillion curse. Since 2024, the approval of ETFs has shifted BTC reserves competition from individuals and institutions to nation-states. However, net outflows have offset a significant portion of net inflows, and the growth dividends of the first curve have gradually transitioned from a positive-sum game to a zero-sum game.

At last year’s Token2049 in Singapore, I used an analogy — the 7 giants at the poker table. In Texas Hold ’em, there’s an interesting scenario: If you sit down at the table today and don’t know who’s being played, then you’re the one being played. This is the essence of a zero-sum game.

As the Crypto market increasingly shifts toward a zero-sum game, the seven giants at the table have gradually emerged:

Position 1 — Exchanges

Position 2 — Financial Institutions (e.g., lending protocols and custodian institutes)

Position 3 — Market Makers

Position 4 — Project Teams

Position 5 — Whale Investors

Position 6 — Venture Capital (VC)

Position 7 — Retail Investors

In previous market cycles, bull-bear rotations occurred amidst rapid first-curve growth, and the abundance of new capital ensured an overall cross-cycle positive-sum game. This made the tensions between these seven giants less pronounced.

However, after 2021, the first growth curve visibly slowed, the net capital growth rate dropped significantly, and the poker table quickly transitioned into a zero-sum or even negative-sum game.

Today, as all other 6 players awkwardly stares at Position 7 (Retail Investors), Position 1 (Exchanges) has begun to feel the existential risk of a collapsing industry. To mitigate this, they have raised entry barriers and increased fees for Position 4 (Project Teams) and Position 3 (Market Makers).

Project Teams (Position 4), which were originally supposed to serve Position 5 (Whales) and Position 6 (VCs), are now forced into direct competition due to shifting game rules. Over time, tensions have escalated to the point where the game itself is becoming unsustainable.

2. The Significance of Crypto’s First Growth Curve and the Final Stretch

The significance of Crypto’s first growth curve is akin to the missionary process of the Bible, the Buddhist scriptures, and the Quran — it depicts faith through narratives, shaping the first wave of consensus that gradually transforms subsequent production relationships.

However, today’s world differs from history in two fundamental ways: first, development is occurring at an unprecedented speed; second, the verification of pragmatism happens almost instantaneously. As a result, growth driven purely by consensus without real-world implementation is unsustainable, and 16 years across 4 market cycles have already stretched the limits.

At this stage of the cycle, whether it’s DePIN, RWA, and BTCFi, or AI Agents, DeSci, and ZK, without real-world implementation of Real Yield and Real Application, it is increasingly difficult to sustain growth merely by relying on Beta-driven narratives.

Trump’s victory is already the last extension of the waning power of narrative consensus, and $Trump, in essence, marks the endpoint of Crypto’s first growth curve.

3. Negative-Sum Game and the Dilemma of “Last-Cycle” VC Tokens

As Crypto’s first growth curve nears its end, competition on the remaining battlefield is undeniably fierce. Despite VC-driven high-valuation fundraising, high FDV with low liquidity, narrative-driven projects lacking tangible products for validation, high TVL with long-term staking and difficult redemption, and exorbitant listing/MM fees still persisting as ongoing struggles, the structural dilemma is evident.

In the final stage of the zero-sum game, if the boundary of the first growth curve is not broken, not only will miracles fail to materialize from thin air, but vicious competition will inevitably lead to a negative-sum game. The widely predicted “last cycle” is precisely the result of this scenario. However, “the last cycle” does not imply the end of Crypto itself but rather the demise of VC-backed projects that rely solely on narrative consensus without delivering Real Yield and Real Application.

It is worth mentioning that, Meme coins are a special interlayer product in this phase. From a narrative consensus perspective, they still belong to the first growth curve. However, in an unprecedented manner, Meme coins are reshaping financial perception — through rapid launches and accelerated market dynamics, they have forcefully shattered the constraints of VC-driven high-valuation fundraising, high FDV with low liquidity, high TVL with long-term staking, and the necessity of costly listing and MM operations.

By leveraging disruptive mechanisms, Memes have effectively set a milestone marking the conclusion of the first growth curve, while simultaneously, through their global viral expansion, they have laid a legitimate foundation for the second growth curve.

4. The Trend of RYA/RWA and the Rise of PayFi

In mid-January 2025, while attending an LP conference in Salt Lake City, I met a Nigerian project founder. David demonstrated his popular PayFi product and shared a striking statistic with me: in Nigeria, Crypto now accounts for over 50% of payments, financial transactions, and asset usage (combined with fiat currency). Due to a large population being ineligible for KYC under the traditional financial system, they have turned directly to Crypto tools as an alternative.

I recall attending a conference in Beijing in 2014, where Robin Li (Baidu CEO) stated that China was experiencing both an industrial revolution in foundational industries and the rise of the internet simultaneously, which is why innovations like internet finance developed so rapidly in China.

Now, more than a decade later, a similar industrial-Web3 revolution is unfolding at an unprecedented pace in Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and South America. Companies and institutes in logistics, trade, manufacturing, and financial settlements — including those from the U.S., China, and Russia — are now being forced to rapidly adapt to meet the needs of their partners and integrate into this transformation.

As a result, the mainstream Crypto market doesn’t need to prove or adjust any conditions — Nigeria and India’s adoption patterns have already provided a clear model. The pace of transformation in 2025 will exceed expectations, and the emergence of Real Yield Assets, Real-World Applications, and PayFi-driven innovations is now within reach, marking the imminent arrival of Crypto’s second growth curve.

5. Crossing the Chasm: The Second Growth Curve of Crypto

It is evident that the second growth curve of Crypto lies in real-world adoption — Real Yield & Real Application.

In the book “Crossing the Chasm”, the process of technological adoption is divided into five stages:

1.Innovators, 2.Early Adopters, 3.Early Majority, 4.Late Majority, 5.Laggards

Between Stages 2 and 3, there exists a major chasm that most products struggle to cross — or require a long time to overcome.

For Crypto, it is clear that the $3 trillion cap itself represents this chasm. The Early Adopters are those who buy into the narrative, whereas the Early Majority consists of those who must witness real-world applications generating economic impact before participating.

Once Real Yield & Real Application are realized, the second growth curve of Crypto will experience an explosive surge, ultimately becoming the mainstream foundation for global economic, financial, asset, and payment transactions and settlements.

$Trump has miraculously served as a milestone at this turning point — both an endpoint and a new beginning. Moreover, as Trump himself continues to fulfill his campaign promises of deregulating Crypto, measures such as rescinding SAB 121 have laid the groundwork for the second growth curve, providing it with a strong legitimacy foundation for the coming expansion.

6. The Crypto Development Landscape and National Scenarios Under Compliance Challenges

Faced with such a sudden shift, most countries and regions are finding it difficult to implement a preemptive legislation approach to Crypto regulation. In Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and South America, Trump’s victory and open policies have provided the ideal conditions for reactive legislation, making rapid adoption and expansion highly likely this year.

Singapore and Hong Kong continue to favor preemptive legislation in financial regulation. However, following Trump’s inauguration and the introduction of Crypto-related executive orders, both jurisdictions have shown signs of easing their stance.

Hong Kong’s regulatory framework for Crypto — such as the Ethereum ETF and the 1/9 licensing regime introduced in 2024 — was both progressive and inherently risk-intensive. However, the regulatory pressure has gradually eased, and with the recent MSO regulations, the issuance and usage of stablecoins are being further standardized.

Singapore, while maintaining its regulatory approach, may lean toward a more reactive stance in certain areas. For example, under the PSA (Payment Services Act), the DPT (Digital Payment Token) framework regulates payment activities but has yet to establish detailed provisions for stablecoin issuance and usage. This regulatory gap is likely to remain unfilled for the time being, suggesting potential room for further adjustments in a reactive manner.

In summary, as of the end of January 2025, under Trump’s administration, global regulatory trends for Crypto are generally moving in a more favorable direction. While this does not indicate a fully stable environment, it has nonetheless provided Crypto’s second growth curve with a critical window for transformation and expansion.

7. Opportunities and Challenges in 2025 Amidst Transformational Shifts

The turning point brought by the second growth curve is bidirectional, meaning it will fundamentally reshape both the Crypto Market and TradFi with profound and lasting impacts.

For the Crypto Market, this shift is akin to a habitual transition similar to a gear shift. This process could alter the previously fixed four-year halving cycle — or at the very least, it will change how sentiment and consensus influence the volatility of bull and bear cycles. As a result, it will inevitably reshape the industry’s evaluation criteria for projects, assets, and application value.

For the global economic, financial, asset, and payment systems, this marks an even more fundamental challenge. This transformation will disrupt the traditional dollar-based financial credit system, which has been built on the U.S. credit since the Bretton Woods framework, and will challenge the Keynesian-dominated economic realities that have defined modern financial structures.

Author: Gary Yang(杨歌)
Date: Feb. 1st, 2025